


Heart as Loud as Lions

by saisei



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Planet, Alternate Universe - Twins, F/M, Jossed, Nonnie Inspired, Nonnies Made Me Do It, Post-Season/Series 01, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-18 16:39:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9394007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saisei/pseuds/saisei
Summary: Post Season 1, Shiro and Pidge crash-land on a deserted planet and need to rely on each other to survive the aftermath of the battle with Zarcon. (written prior to Season 2 airing; this is an AU where Pidge and Matt are identical twins.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> > You've got a heart as loud as lions  
> So why let your voice be tamed?
>> 
>> Read All About It (Pt. III) by Emeli Sandé

The black lion was falling.

Not that the green lion was doing any better. On the plus side, the collapse of the corrupted wormhole hadn't torn them apart, which meant hey, probably the other lions and the castle and the Paladins and Allura and Coran were all doing peachy, not shredded by gravitational forces or freaky magical quintessence-of-evil powers or anything.

On the minus side, the pretty blue planet under them kept getting closer. Green was scanning in huge amounts of data – breathable atmosphere, check, landmasses with plant life, check, any signs of settlement or civilization, nope-nada-nil – so Pidge was able to make a reasonable guess about the optimal areas to crash land, but Shiro didn't seem to be doing anything over there in Black.

If he was alive, that was. Pidge stole a few tiqs from Green's surveying schedule and had her scan Black. Verdict: unconscious and being shaken like ketchup in a bottle. Pidge missed ketchup. It was one of the top 100 foods she and Hunk planned on synthesizing as soon as they had some downtime in the war for galactic freedom. No victory, no ketchup, and no Shiro meant no victory, but she'd have devised a plan to save him _anyway_ , not related to a passion for condiments. Out of the goodness of her heart.

Actually, she wasn't sure how good of a person she was, but she was dead certain her solutions to the calculations she'd been running were correct. She trusted physics above all things, especially when there was no time to make mistakes. She had to bring Green under Black at an angle and break their fall, slowing their descent to _survivable_ , and bring both lions down to a landmass, in a temperate zone, near fresh water. If she failed, she and Shiro would definitely be pulped. She regretted thinking about ketchup, now.

She kept Shiro's vital signs open in a tiny but visible window and let Green swoop, a beautiful medley of thrusters and magical energy that was glorious for the few tiqs until Green's shoulders scraped under Black. The noise and vibration drowned out all Pidge's senses; it felt like all her teeth were being vacuumed out of her skull. Green roared as Black's full weight overwhelmed every mechanical system, and for a hideous moment Pidge thought her plan had failed.

But then Green opened up a new HUD – Pidge had hacked into a lion, _yes_ , and she must never ever let Allura find out – and Pidge's hands flew, coaxing Black to sluggish life. Not actual _piloting_ , but staving off death, and that was what she cared about. She, Pidge Katie Holt Gunderson, was going to save Shiro's life once again. There were probably other habits she should be forming – being polite about Coran's cooking or using the terrifying Altean nostril cleaner instead of picking her nose – but really, screw that manners crap. If her schtick was going to be keeping Shiro alive on multiple planets across the universe, well, he'd just have to get used to it.

Of course... she was also going to have to fuck him over on multiple counts, and she didn't know how that was going to play out. Matt would be pissed at her. He'd been like Lance and Keith, full of wide-eyed hero worship for the recruitment-poster-perfect pilot. In Matt's case, Pidge knew him well enough to suspect a crush as big as Shiro's impressive muscles. She bet he'd stammered a lot around Shiro and tried to impress him with obscure cryobiology references. But hey, Shiro condemned himself to save Matt's life, so maybe bacterial cryopreservation really was the key to his heart.

Or had been, in his pre-Galra days. Pidge blew out a hard breath, and nudged the lions to slow their descent, to come down easy, to slide into the atmosphere like it was a soft bed after a long hard day. The mental component to lion-piloting didn't seem to pay any attention to all the ideas fermenting in her head, but she was getting the hang of broadcasting a clear emotion-picture. Pestering Coran for the scientific background to all the mystical woo was slow going, but Pidge had another sixty-odd years left to solve it.

She wasn't going to die young, she told Green, and especially she wasn't going to die _today_. Green's response came in the form of trajectories and scans. Pidge was trained in communications; when it came to not disintegrating while traveling at nearly 30,000 kilometers per hour, she assumed that attempting any manual override would be lethal. She trusted Green.

(Probably she shouldn't, just like she trusted Shiro but definitely shouldn't, and like he trusted her when she was the most likely person to want him brain-scanned and taken apart. She thinks about trust a lot, for example at every meal full of potential allergens and toxins, or every time she recalls that the castle somehow installed a universal translator app in their brains on arrival. Which was _useful_ , but creepy as fuck, and made her wonder what words even mean anyway: why was a second still a second, but a tiq was a tiq instead of 1.2087 seconds? And considering Shiro got his translation app from Galra interrogators, did he even hear the same words she did, or were they all twisted?)

The lions dropped down into thick cloud cover – _flew_ , Pidge corrected herself – and ripped out a handful of seconds later. Old mountains, rounded and lush with greenery, spread under them; to the polar south the ocean glimmered with late afternoon sunlight; from this height nothing screamed alien or life-threatening. A blinking orange box on both the HUDs indicated the landing site. ETA: fifty dodecatiqs.

Pidge checked her harness again. The outside temperature was rising, and on the surface a balmy spring day was ending; her readout gave the ground temperature in tads, and she converted that in her head to degrees Celsius (24) and Kelvin (297.15). Green stretched her legs, curling her paws and flexing her knees, as the orange box fixed on a broad meadow.

 _It looks pretty_ , Pidge thought. In the next second, Green was tearing through the grass, raking claws deep into the dirt, and Pidge yelled in reflexive terror. Black slid free and rolled; Pidge pulled herself together and used her hacked link to manipulate Black's legs and tail.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," she chanted under her breath. "I learned piloting by watching Lance."

She didn't know who she was talking to. Green came to a halt maybe three or four kilometers from the touchdown point, and Pidge made her turn right around and chase after Black. Altean spacesuit technology kicked serious ass: even though Pidge could feel herself being tossed around, the suit absorbed most of the impact. She might walk away from the massive space battle, being spit out by a destabilizing wormhole, and crash-landing on an alien planet with just a few bruises and her head still attached to her spinal column. Which was, you know, a good thing.

Everyone else from Earth didn't seem fazed by how much time had passed, but the scheduler on Pidge's laptop still worked. Back on Earth around now they would have been getting back the results of the quad exams they'd all skipped, on account of being missing. Teams would be shuffled around, and some people would be reassigned. Pidge wasn't sure, but she strongly suspected that the UniGov knew about aliens – if not the Galra specifically – and was using the Garrison to build a secret space army. No one had been very surprised when Shiro brought his ship down. They'd responded like there was a protocol for dealing with spaceships.

Green caught up with Black and shoved in, shoulder to shoulder, ripping up more of the meadow as finally Black's spinning skid slowed to a stop. Black's HUD sent Pidge a constant blipstream of malfunction notifications and repair requests, and she told Green to keep sending back that she was sorry, she _really really_ was, but repairs on tech would have to wait. Pilot survival took priority.

Black opened up without being prompted, but at least this time didn't spit Shiro out like he was Coran's home cooking. Pidge took a deep breath, held it, and then blew out slowly.

"You're such a good lion," she told Green as she got up, rubbing her hands over the dash. "I mean, we'd have been dead without you. When we get back I'm going to give you the best tune-up you've had in a millenium, and all the upgrades I can think of. Thank you."

Green's auto-eval system kicked in; to Pidge's ear it sounded a lot like purring. On impulse she brofisted the dash lightly, trying to push all her thoughts at Green. _I owe you bigtime. Someday I'll find a way to pay you back._

Pidge grabbed her bayard, the medkit, and the rope and tarp out of the camping gear. Keith had said that supplying the lions was overkill, because why would they ever need things like multi-purpose tools or food-goo synthesizers? He'd survived in the desert on his own for a year, blah blah blah, probably eating lizards and washing his underwear with sand. (Not that she didn't like Keith; Pidge had a soft spot for conspiracy theorists who turned out to be right all along. Plus the equipment he'd cobbled together had been cool. Just sometimes the overlap between his intensity and natural weirdness could be bizarre.)

Green lowered her head so Pidge could dash out of her mouth, heading for Black. She didn't recall that this was an alien planet full of unknown dangers until she was halfway there, but realistically, she didn't know what kind of precautions she could or should be taking. The air tasted... normal. A bit dusty, because of the way they'd crashed. Both lions were steaming, and a strong scent of ozone made her wrinkle her nose. As far as Pidge – and Green – could tell, the only threat here was the one they'd carried in themselves.

She called for Shiro before she started up the ramp, letting her footfalls echo and rustling all the crap she was carrying. Everyone knew better than to sneak up on Shiro. A quick peek showed he wasn't in the control chair – good. Pidge had had unpleasant visions of him slumped over and bleeding hideously.

He still wasn't answering her, though.

She changed to _it's Pidge_ as she checked the console crawlspaces – which were a perfect size for her, not so much for Shiro's 185 cm of bulging muscle – and then moved clockwise to the storage locker, which was stuffed full of supplies. Next to it was a mini food-glopper, which, no. In the very back was the unpleasant vacuum toilet. Coran had helped her install privacy doors and had contributed advanced deodorizing technology, but still – she wrinkled her nose and slid the door open. No Shiro. She even looked up at the ceiling, in case he was lurking there, like a spider. Nope.

Green would have alerted her if he'd left, so that meant he was still here. If not in the cabin, then in the body of the lion, which was made up of engines and enormous moving metal pieces that could reduce even Shiro to a splat of nothing in the blink of an eye.

She contacted Green and asked very nicely to make sure Black _didn't move a single metaphorical hair_ , and then pressed the access panel in sequence so it popped off. There was a handlight attached to the panel's rear, next to about 30 paragraphs of warnings in very small Altean text. She set the panel to the side and peered in, the light around her wrist.

Shiro was at the service catwalk's far corner, by the foothold ladder: his back to the wall, knees pulled up, knife in his left hand, and chest rising and falling way too fast.

"Hi, Shiro," Pidge chirped, smiling so wide her cheeks hurt. She dropped her armful of stuff outside and leaned further in, keeping the light to the side and out of either of their eyes. With an exaggerated gesture, she pushed her glasses up on her head, so they didn't reflect. She didn't want to risk startling him. "It's me, Pidge. Remember me? Matt's sister. I beat you at karaoke night last week. You can't carry a tune for beans. It was hilarious. Do you want some help with that?"

Shiro was digging the knife in under the gap where his prosthetic attached to his arm – unlike Sendak, who'd had a port that his arm locked into, Shiro's was permanently attached. Everyone had caught him testing the arm at some point or another: seeing how far he could twist it and bear the pain, trying out tools to see what could cut it, picking at the scar tissue whenever his shirt was off. "Sorry," Shiro said, eyes wide enough that he looked super-young. Pidge kind of wanted to baby him like she'd babied Matt, up until he'd left home and got himself kidnapped. Another "Sorry," and Shiro pushed the knife in deeper, so fresh blood welled up over the arm's metal edge. He was sweating, enough that his hair was damp and his face shone, but Pidge thought he probably would be able to cut the arm off before passing out. He was one of the strongest people she knew, even with all his weaknesses.

"It's cool," Pidge said, like he was talking about something that didn't matter much. She saw Shiro relax a fraction, and cranked her big sister skills up a notch. "But seriously, if we've been together this long and you think I don't have plans for getting that thing off, you don't know me very well."

"Plans," Shiro repeated. Pidge really wanted to get his head under the medscanner, even though he always had to force himself to get scanned and that made his blood pressure shoot up.

"You know Coran and the elemental woo that he's totally into," she said offhand, gesturing with the hand that wasn't keeping the light steady. Shiro's eyes snapped to the movement, like a cat getting ready to pounce on a toy. "The colors linking to aspects of the universe that also manifest as character traits – I'm not mocking, I'm just green like the wind in the trees, a seeker of knowledge and asker of too many questions. It's carved on my soul."

"You are," Shiro said, and swallowed, eyes flicking to Pidge and then away. "Mocking."

"Coran understands. Because of my _elemental nature_." Shiro's expression nearly loosened, but then he sucked in a breath and clenched his hand around the knife. "But he teaches all of us what he thinks we're suited for – so Keith and Lance get a lot of fighting and team bonding, because of the essential fire-water balance, and Hunk and I have been digging ourselves out from under thousands of years of technological advances, him untangling the theory and me taking stuff apart to figure out how it tiqs." She smiled hopefully, but Shiro didn't react to the bad pun. Not that she blamed him; she'd just hoped to reach him – or at least, the part of him that she thought-slash-hoped was his real self. "Red and Blue are all about spirit and soul, Yellow and Green are physical."

She made a face. The most irking thing about Coran's blithe wackiness was that he _also_ knew more than all her instructors at the Garrison and at the polytechnic she'd graduated from before that. If he was so right about technologies Pidge could barely wrap her mind around – she'd seen him take apart the castle's power generators and rebuild them with a 3% increase in output, just because he was bored – then maybe (a big maybe) she was the one who was wrong about the elements thing. Even though the idea made her want to curl up and cry.

She squinted at Shiro again. _He_ made her want to cry, but being a Voltron pilot meant understanding balance. Now was her time to take care of him, and she'd make herself believe six stupid things before breakfast every day for the rest of her life if she could just _fix_ him.

"Plans, plural," she told Shiro. "Every time I learn something more about the Galra – or about the Alteans, they keep secrets – I refine those plans. Because that arm's attached to you but you're not attached to it, and ever since the castle crystal thing it's been pretty much our number one weakness waiting to happen. But... just how even would I start that conversation?" She paused. "Even with all his fiddling, Coran says the healing pods can't grow you a new arm. He waffled a lot, but what I think what he avoided saying is shapeshifters regrow their own parts, with some pod help." She shrugged. "Aliens. You ready to move outside?"

Shiro swallowed. "I don't want to hurt you."

Pidge grinned. "Not even an option, big dude. Slide me the knife and I'll pass you the light. Okay?"

Shiro breathed steadily for long enough that Pidge worried she'd lost him, but then he pulled the knife out. It made a very nasty sound – scraping and wet – which made Shiro clench his jaw. He set the knife down and shoved it over with his foot. Pidge stuck the magnets on the back of the light to the wall as far in as she could reach, angled down like an inviting porchlight.

Then she snagged the knife, crawled out, and started hauling supplies outside. She was pegging the tarp down and going over the procedure in her head when Shiro appeared, walking down towards her like there was someone behind him with a hand on his back, shoving him forward.

"Hi," Pidge said. She really needed to work on hiding her nerves better. At least she didn't feel like throwing up. None of them had had time to eat since breakfast, yesterday-ish. She hoped that wherever he was, Hunk was able to find something with real flavor. She hoped that all the others were safe and well-fed. And together. Shiro's presence was comforting; without him, she'd be terrified.

"Pidge," Shiro answered, with a nod. "I know what you must be thinking, but I can't let you – "

"I don't know what other Paladins do with their lions in their free time, but Green and I do pet tricks." Behind her, Green snorted, and Shiro's eyes went even wide and wary. Pidge dialed up her naïve, harmless cadet act. "Full disclosure, at least half the time I'm her stupid pet, who didn't even know how to use the restraining harness or the flight recorder, and I have to unlearn tons of stupid crap I picked up from Lance by osmosis." She turned and gave Green a wide grin. One of Green's eyes flickered off for a tiq in an unmistakable wink. "The lions have quintessimal AIs, so I can't even start to comprehend what the universe looks like to them, but they're also tools. Look. Green – shake."

Pidge held her hand out. Green's head lowered to as close to eye-level as she could reach, and then one monstrous paw slid forward, claw fitting against her palm so lightly that Pidge didn't even sway. (She wasn't going to tell Shiro how many times she'd been tumbled across the room, practicing.)

"I hear Keith tries to, like, emotionally bond with his lion," she said, giddy the way only giant alien robots made her. "This is so much more fun. Green – hold."

Green nudged her down with the claw and then pressed her paw down. Between the weight and the claws, it was like being pinned under a giant robotic blanket. Absolutely safe, of course (they'd practiced and _practiced_ ), but also inescapable.

"I give up, you win," Pidge called, and Green backed off. Pidge bounced up to her feet, swiping dirt off her armor with both hands. She raised an eyebrow at Shiro. "We can do this." He still looked skeptical. She nodded towards his arm. "Do you remember how you got that?"

And now his expression went stubborn. Pidge guessed he probably hated being asked what he remembered, and was scared by how many blank gaps there were. After a moment, he said, stiffly, "I asked those rescued prisoners. They said my arm was gnawed off in a fight. And Sendak said the druids... experimented on me."

"Yikes." Pidge made a face. "I don't want you to remember, in that case. This is going to suck, but not that bad."

"Right," Shiro said, and Pidge's heart warmed at how sarcastic he sounded. "Because you've got so much experience with field amputation." 

"Because if we don't do this, the Galra will probably track us here and steal the lions. We'd end up prisoners, and I don't want you to go back to being a gladiator." She gestured widely. "Coran tells me I'll probably understand quintessence in another sixty to a hundred years, but it's... a kind of power derived from life – or death – that's like a separate dimension layered over our whole universe. It doesn't experience time or place, Coran says. Wormhole jumps go through it. And the Galra seem to use that quality of existing in all places at all times to route their communications. A released prisoner fitted with a cyborg arm finds a lion, and the Galra drop in an hour later? That level of intel is terrifying, and I don't know how to fight against it."

"No one does," Shiro pointed out, and he sounded like he'd given up. But he grabbed the hem of his shirt in both hands and peeled it up, sliding his left arm free first before tugging the bloodied and cut right sleeve free. He pointed at the tarp. "You want me to lie down there?"

Pidge's mouth wanted to blabber out apologies; she settled for nodding.

Once he was settled, shirt folded under his head like a pillow, Pidge opened out the medkits from the two lions and explained what she intended to use. Shiro didn't like the idea of being anesthetized; Pidge told him to suck it up. She wished she could knock him out entirely, preferably for days on end in a nice healing pod, but despite all the unbelievable stuff that was turning out to be true, wishes still didn't work.

When Shiro said he was ready, Pidge had Green lower her paw down, one claw above and one below the incision site. He gave Pidge a disbelieving look when she asked if he was comfortable, but admitted that he wasn't in pain. Pidge administered the drug sequence according to the pictograms Coran had helpfully attached to the injector (wait 100 tiqs, then another 50 after the second dose, then the third dose and a 500 tiq wait, during which she failed to get Shiro to play I Spy ("I spy something... green." "Seriously, Pidge?"), despite how unnaturally relaxed and mellow he'd become).

She set up the portable force-field generator – no sterile workspace like a force bubble – and double checked that Shiro was numb from the shoulder down. Pidge had been telling herself that she'd had her hands inside every imaginable kind of engine, and all she had to do was picture this as just one more repair.

But it wasn't. Engines didn't bleed, and she hadn't been prepared for the smell of heated metal and bone as she used her bayard blade to make one clean slice through the arm, top to bottom, five centimeters from where the metal sleeve ended. She came way too close to throwing up, and as soon as the blade was through she dropped it, her hand spasming in a wild moment of vertiginous terror, thinking she'd made a mistake, done the wrong thing, harmed Shiro, who'd only ever been good to her and her family.

 _This is an engine_ , she told herself, panting through the nausea and avoiding Shiro's eyes, even as he tried to raise his head high enough to see over the claw, see what she'd done. _I need to fix it right now. Coran told me what to do._

There wasn't even as much blood as she'd anticipated; the spot where she'd cut was mostly machinery built up on bone and nerves that had been augmented with quintessence, an eerily violet perversion. Her greatest fear was that she'd find those Galra enhancements even in the flesh part of Shiro's arm – that no matter how much she trimmed away, there's always be more, until Shiro ceased to exist.

Engineers are not cowards, she told herself firmly, and forced herself to pick her blade back up. She slit the sides of the metal casing and pried them off with her gloved fingers. At the top it had grown into Shiro's skin and she had to keep cutting to get what was left of his arm free. The deep gouges Shiro had made earlier made this messy and ragged, and Pidge was _never_ going to be able to eat meat again. She knew she had to be conservative with her Alteran medical supplies – they were only meant to hold someone together long enough to get back to the castle – but they worked like magic. One sprayfilm to stop the bleeding, another to prevent nerve damage, a handheld scanner to make sure the area was clean of metal, bone splinters, and quintessence before she was given the all-clear chime.

She had a kind of shrink-wrap film that the Alteans had invented which had the power to regrow skin. Only two pieces, so she couldn't afford to make even one mistake in applying it, but fortunately she'd burned and cut her hands enough working on the lions that she'd experienced Coran's technique many times over. The scale was vastly different, though, and she didn't know how well new skin would bond to old scar tissue. She wrapped as high as she could, hoping for the best. She wound bandages over the film, tightly all the way up to the shoulder, and then it was done.

The arm Shiro was left with was _short_ , worse than she'd pictured; there had barely been a couple of centimeters of flesh trapped inside the metal. Judging by the uneven lumpiness of the blue bandaging, she'd fucked up Shiro's muscles terribly. Everything would be fine once they got to the castle, she told herself. They'd get rescued soon. No one was dead. She wouldn't end up dying here alone, after having killed Shiro with terrible amateur surgery.

"Matt?" Shiro said, sounding dazed and worried, as if he'd been trying to be heard for a while now. His hand was resting limply on the force field, but he mustered the energy to knock when Pidge swiped her eyes clear of stupid useless tears. "Still here, Matt. I won't let them take you again, you hear me?"

"You always take good care of me." Pidge snerked her drippy snotty nose and swallowed down bile. "You're a big sweetheart." She had just enough spray stuff and skin patch left over to take care of the nasty gouge taken out of Shiro's side during his fight with the Galra. Even though the scratches were scabbed over, Pidge hoped to avoid both infection and scarring. She'd tried not to ogle Shiro's bare chest and back, because that would be a gross violation, but he had a _lot_ of scars.

When she was finally done, she had a pile of medical and Galra waste to dispose of. She missed the Garrison's strict military salvage culture: she'd always been able to find bags or boxes by scrounging around for a bit. The lions, on the other hand, barely had the essential necessities, but nothing as trivial as garbage bags. She'd settled on using the carry-sack for the tent from the green lion, even though it was wasteful of the waterproof fabric. She threw away the bandage wrappers and the used gloves and collapsed the force field down around the bag.

With no force field left to rest on, Shiro's hand dropped onto the back of Green's paw, which he tried to scratch.

Pidge pushed to her feet, cracking her shoulders and neck, laddering her arms over her head, and blinking hard as tension gave way to limp gelatinous shaking. She wasn't prepared, and barely managed to turn away before vomiting up all the nothing in her stomach. Gross. Her mouth was full of spit and nastiness, and she spat out as much as she could before pushing dirt over the mess.

Shiro was calling for her again – well, Matt, but as his identical twin she'd gotten used to that years ago – and Pidge would give her favorite socket wrench for breath mints right now. Breath mints and rescue and blankets to pull over her head and – well. No sense wishing for the impossible.

She walked – wavered, more like – around to the opposite side to pick Shiro's hand up in hers. His fingers immediately grabbed hold, eyes on her, breathing with a kind of intense resolution like he was working up to reassuring her and taking the lead. Despite being immobilized and down one limb. That was Shiro all over, really.

"Green, careful and back," Pidge said. Machinery rumbled, and the claws rose straight up, gingerly, before the entire enormous paw was retracted and Green settled into a resting crouch. "Good girl."

"Thank you," Shiro said. His voice sounded scraped raw.

"Good boy," Pidge told him, and reached down to ruffle his hair and then finger comb it back off his face. She lowered his hand to his stomach and worked her fingers free, even though that gave Shiro a sad little line of confused incomprehension right between his eyebrows. "Close your eyes for a sec, okay? Until I tell you to open them?"

"Why?" Shiro asked, but he did as she asked when she stared him down.

She widened the force field around herself again and hauled the Galra arm up in both hands to drop it into the disposal bag with the rest of the rubbish. Not exactly out of sight, out of mind, but she didn't want Shiro to have to see that.

"Do you think you can walk?" she asked, and Shiro's eyes popped open.

"No problem," he said, using his voice of calm assurance, but she saw him testing his legs out cautiously. He bent and straightened his knees, and then curled up to sitting. Despite the evidence right before her eyes of just how awesome Shiro's stomach muscles were, Pidge still hurried to support his back and make sure the bandage on his side hadn't been torn off. "If I fall over, I'll crush you like a bug," he pointed out, sounding amused.

Pidge snorted. "I don't crush easy. Up on three?"

He nodded, and his stupid hair fell back into his face.

Despite his reassurance, he did end up as shaky and wobbly as someone who Lance had taken _for a spin_ , and he leaned on Pidge like a crutch, panting for breath too hard to apologize like he normally would.

"Just don't barf on my head," Pidge kept repeating as they made their slow limping way over to where Green was waiting. "We don't have a shower yet. I'm going to make one, though. Maybe tomorrow. I have to figure out water. And piping. At least there's vegetation, which means lots of stuff we can process in the glopper and make edible. Don't eat anything that _hasn't_ been processed, okay? Just because something looks like an apple doesn't mean your body can digest it like an apple – sorry, didn't mean to talk about food. Don't barf, okay?"

"Matt," Shiro started, and Pidge's stomach cramped, hoping he wasn't getting them confused again. "He used to talk like that."

"You should hear us when we're together," Pidge said. They'd reached the start of the rampway up. "Watch your footing. And your head."

"My balance is off," Shiro said, ducking around the protruding part of a latch mechanism and leaning too far, catching himself by grabbing Pidge's shoulder hard enough to grind bones together. She didn't let herself squeak, even though it hurt a lot and she was going to have a Shiro-handprint bruise.

"That's expected. Don't worry." Pidge made him stand by the chair while she made up a bed on the floor, using both sets of foam mattresses and emergency blankets. "Come here and lie down."

"I'm okay," Shiro said, and frowned. His hand hovered in the air, like he knew he shouldn't be touching but still had to restrain himself from poking at the bandages. Pidge understood; she was like that, too. "I'm not tired. Can I have my shirt back?"

"I don't have a guest chair, and if you fall over or bang into shit, we don't have enough medical supplies to re-do what I just did. And I'll be all alone if you die, so just – " She pointed at the pallet on the floor. "Pretend it's a vacation or something. Your shirt's gross, but I'll wash it out when we get back, I promise."

Shiro's expression softened – stupidly, like always, he cared when someone on his team was in trouble, but never on his own behalf. "I'm not leaving you alone, Pidge."

"So lie down." Pidge went to go help him sit and get settled, now that he was following her orders. She pulled off his boots and socks – after another round of protest defeated by logic (seriously, who wanted gross boots in their bed?) – and tucked him in. The blankets and mattress were long, probably because Alterans were also sometimes long, so she could cover Shiro up to his neck. "I missed a lot of school when I was a little kid. My mom used to do this for me." Pidge had always snuck out of bed the first chance she got, and her mother had pretended not to notice. She wasn't telling Shiro that, though.

After a moment, Shiro said, "I'm sorry I keep failing your family. I remember your dad and Matt – probably not everything," he admitted, face flushing with shame as he looked away. "I forgot... a lot of things. But I remember them, the way they talked about you and your mother."

Pidge squatted down so she she could look him in the face and not – for once – tower over him. "We're a weird family." She considered that a badge of pride. "You know, when the Kerberos mission disappeared, the cover story was that pilot error was to blame. And you were the pilot, right? So I did a lot of digital stalking-slash-detecting because I hated you." She grinned to let Shiro know she was over that. "I was young and didn't know better. But if there's anything you want to know about _your_ family, you can ask me. In a few minutes. I need to go clean up outside."

She felt a weird twinge at leaving Shiro alone inside Green while she gathered stuff up. It wasn't his fault that the Galra got inside him and his lion, but fact was fact. He'd been used before, and she had no way of telling whether he was still being used. She looked up at Black, a frozen giant looking good and creepy with the sunlight streaming around his head from behind. His shadowed eyes seemed to follow her. Pidge shivered and grabbed up Shiro's shirt, and the tarp, and the bag of stuff to get rid of. She staggered under the heavy bulk of it all, but at least she didn't need to make two trips.

"Where are we going?" Shiro asked when she came back and settled into the chair, calling up the HUD and starting pre-flight. He started to sit up, wincing, but Pidge glared at him until he lay back down. 

Pidge gave Green the okay, and the ground fell away below them. "Stars are full of positive quintessence, so the local sun should be able to destroy the Galra arm." She bit her lip at Shiro's look, like he expected better from her. "Look how successful we were with their crystal, even with Coran and Allura's expertise. And my pet spybot nearly lost us Lance and the castle. _Of course_ it kills me to throw advanced alien tech away, but at least it's just metaphorical killing of my intellectual pride and not real death. Or being sucked up into a prison ship, which sounds even worse than death. Torture and then a date with whoever's got the Champion title now." Green popped the course up for final approval, and Pidge scanned it quickly before hitting _activate_. "Do Champions get any any benefits? Like a pension or a fancy hat, or starring roles in vidramas? Bathtubs of money?"

"I got to stay alive, and the robot arm was probably expensive." The bitterness in his voice was very un-Shiro-like, and Pidge felt like she'd been reprimanded by her favorite teacher, or caught hacking into government databases by her mother again. Her ears got all funny and hot. "Hey," Shiro said. He looked like he was sorry for snapping at her, and Pidge half-wished they could just hug out all their emotions. Talking was tiring, and normally she was _never_ tired of talking. "You could make a bathtub, right?"

"What was _with_ the Alterans?" Pidge burst out. "Nutritionally perfect food that tastes like grass and tofu, quote-unquote showers with no water, the weird toilets, _nostril cleaners_ – what did they have against _fun_?" She glared at Shiro. "Of course I can make a bathtub. One with bubble jets? Built in massage? Do you like those fancy oils and stuff to put in, like with flowers?" She squinted at him. "I bet you secretly do. Your hair usually looks nice." That sounded weird. She made herself think about plumbing instead.

Shiro snorted from trying not to laugh at her, and then they both nearly lost it. "I just wanted hot water," he said, when he had himself back under control. His eyes were still crinkled with laugh-lines at the corners. "I remember... that I like baths. Nothing about flowers, though."

"Yeah, well, we both know that I'm going to have to run tests now."

Shiro closed his eyes. His mouth was soft and still kind of smiley. "Make some scatter plots and bar graphs."

"Discover the formula for the optimal bathing experience."

Shiro made a noise, the way Pidge's dog used to when she fell asleep in a patch of sun, halfway between a whine and a snuffle. Pidge yawned just watching Shiro succumb to sleep. She wanted the day to be over and done, and to be heading home to her own bed.

"What am I going to do?" she asked Green idly, taking out her laptop and trying to focus on the program she was writing for the food glopper.

Green didn't say anything – of course – but an ETA countdown started up in the corner of the HUD, duodecimal tiqs flashing as the sun grew larger before them.


	2. Chapter 2

Back in the castle, Pidge had never seen Shiro sleep. He must have; he never seemed grumpy or stumbled over his own feet. Pidge was used to sneaking around at night and stealing naps, herself, so she'd always just waved when she and Shiro crossed paths in the middle of the castle's sleep-cycle, considering him bad-habit kindred.

But for the first week after she removed the arm, he slept almost all the time. She made him eat and get up to walk around some, and moved the mattresses outside to one of the tents during the daytime so that at least he'd get accustomed to the planet's diurnal cycle. She got a lot of work done, muttering to herself way more than she normally did. Back when Matt went missing, she'd talked to him a lot. People always asked dumb questions about being twins, like whether they had a psychic connection or could feel when the other was in pain. But Pidge had felt strongly that if Matt died, she'd know somehow, which made no logical sense – and it made even less sense to keep updating him on the information she'd gathered or her plan to break into the Garrison, but that's what she did.

She didn't like knowing that in desperate times she could be as superstitious as anyone, but that appeared to be true. When Shiro was conked out with a low-grade fever for the first few days she narrated every move she made. Mostly boring stories about how hardass Instructor LaSalle made the cadets in his punishment detail unpick every seam in their uniform pants and then sew them back together perfectly before morning turn-out.

"Three times," Pidge told Shiro grimly. "I swear I was even more nearsighted by the time he was satisfied. And he smirked like he thought we were _funny_. I don't know if you remember him." She took a deep breath and sliced through one of the blankets, folded-over, with Shiro's (frankly gross) shirt laid out on top in lieu of a pattern. She knew Coran used the fuser at the castle for clothing repairs, and after a morning spent recalibrating and testing the portable one in the emergency supplies (her shorts were finally back in one piece, yay), she was set to make Shiro a top that wasn't threadbare, ripped, and bloodstained. She had Garrison-approved sewing skills, after all. "You could stay naked if you wanted," she suggested. She'd found out – totally by accident – on the second day that Shiro apparently didn't own underpants (well, what he'd muttered at her was, _the Galra don't do lingerie_ , but Pidge could read between the highly embarrassed lines). Her second sewing project would be to turn the less-horrible parts of his old shirt into a couple pairs of shorts.

Shiro didn't stir, even though she was teasing him. He looked so innocent and helpless, and she felt like a giant pervert for all the ogling she'd been doing. "Fine, have it your way, Sleeping Beauty," she said. "You better be grateful."

The shirt turned out a size too big, and Shiro said he loved the roominess (and also the hood). He just muttered _thanks_ for the shorts, face flaming, and Pidge agreed to never mention her discovery of his bare ass if he promised to disavow her sewing skills to anyone but Hunk (who'd been with her for one of Instructor LaSalle's punishments; changes to the cafeteria menu had been involved).

After improving Shiro's wardrobe, Pidge got to work on the campsite. Once she was convinced Shiro wasn't going to die at the drop of a hat, she took him out with Green to fill up the water tanks at a nearby lake and stock up on organic matter to process into edible food. Probably it was a good thing that Shiro stayed asleep for most of that, because Pidge wasn't picky: she threw algae, insects, grass, moss, decaying wood, and a bunch of weird jellyfish-like things into the glopper bins.

Towards the end of the week, Shiro kept getting startled awake by the rumbling of his own stomach.

"Maybe it's the fresh air," he said apologetically, as Pidge handed him his second breakfast, a bowl of glop thinned to soup consistency, "but I'm _starving_." He took several enthusiastic gulps, almost like it was tasty.

Pidge sighed. "Or maybe the alien energy source you were carrying around isn't supporting your metabolism any more. You want seconds?"

Shiro squinted into his empty bowl. "I don't know."

"You're eighty-odd kilos of solid muscle, you probably need like two or three bowls each meal."

"Yeah, but you refuse to tell me what's in here."

Pidge rolled her eyes. "Dude, I tell you _everything_. Since we got here I haven't farted, jerked off, or fallen over my own feet without reporting to you in full and probably disgusting detail." She held up her left arm to show him the purple bruise that went from elbow to shoulder. "Remember this? I told you all about my adventures with those things that look like apples yesterday. The tree? The rock that wasn't as stable as it looked? The nasty pink juice that got in my hair?" She gestured up, because even after scrubbing for ten minutes she could still smell the cloying fruit scent. She wouldn't be surprised if her scalp was totally pink. "I threw buckets of them in the glopper, but you know. Everything comes out with monoflavor and monotexture. At least it won't kill us."

Shiro looked mildly horrified; Pidge would have to work on using her filters again, she guessed, now that her audience was listening to her.

"What?" she asked, when he stayed quiet.

He shook his head, and got up to go get himself a refill. Pidge had added a shelf under the glop dispenser, so the thing could be operated one-handed, which meant Shiro didn't need her fussing over him.

She hoped he wasn't mad at her. That'd suck.

She refilled their cups with glopper-purified water from the bucket – definitely easier to do with two hands – and put them on the tarp-covered tree stump that they were using as a table. The way life had developed on this planet was weird. She'd seen bugs, burrowed in the ground or in rotting wood, but the biggest life forms were in the oceans. If anything here was sentient, she guessed it'd be aquatic. But she got a creepy feeling sometimes out in the too-quiet woods, wondering if Zarkon had... harvested this world, stealing its people, animals, and quintessence hundreds of years ago. She worried about stumbling over an abandoned village or something. She didn't want evidence of another tragedy.

Shiro returned, holding his bowl carefully. After Pidge had gone sprawling over yet another rock they'd raked up in their crash-landing, she and Green had spent one morning making nice flat walkways from the lions to the central part of their camp. Pidge was proud that in her care, Shiro hadn't taken any falls, even though he'd been practically sleepwalking most of the time. Shiro seemed disturbingly zen about things when he was awake, but Pidge was always aware how screwed they'd be if he re-opened his injuries.

_I'm handling this all pretty well_ , Pidge thought, watching Shiro set his bowl down and then lower himself carefully to sit on his rock-slash-chair.

So she bristled doubly hard when Shiro said, with no lead-up, "You shouldn't take risks."

Pidge blinked at him, and then very deliberately took off her glasses to polish them on the hem of her shirt. "Excuse me?"

"Going off by yourself and climbing trees, for example." Pidge's outrage must have been written all over her face, because Shiro held up his hand, meeting her eyes with a pleading look. "Not because you're a girl or because I think I'm the boss here, okay? From a very selfish, survival point of view, I need you, alive and as undamaged as possible." His fingers curled into a fist, settling on his knee. "If you got into trouble, I don't even know how I'd find you."

"You'd ask Green," Pidge snapped. " _Duh._ Or she'd come get you. She tracks both of our locations and vitals. She's probably wondering why my blood pressure is going up now."

Shiro's shoulders slumped; maybe he _hadn't_ realized that. "But you could still die before help came."

"I could get stung by an alien bee and die right now in front of your eyes, and you still couldn't help me." That made Shiro go wide-eyed with vigilance. "I told you, there aren't any flying insects." Before he could get all worried about – who knew – scorpions or something, Pidge went on, "My mom's a rock climber, and she took me and Matt out ever since we were kids. I know what I'm doing, and I can handle a bruise or two." She bit her tongue before adding _unlike your ego_ , which wouldn't have been fair, seeing as Shiro didn't seem to want to start a fight.

"I'm gonna start pulling my weight around here," Shiro told her, jaw stubbornly tight, like he expected her to refuse. "I don't think either of us should be going out alone. And," he added, pitching his voice to stop Pidge from interrupting, "I need you to help me train so I can fight like this. And I'm pretty certain you want to take the black lion apart, but don't know how to ask."

"It seemed forward on our first date," Pidge snapped, still pissed.

Shiro burst out into laughter, which Pidge was not expecting. He laughed as quietly as he did most things, like he was trying to downplay his size, but his eyes sparkled as they teared up and he doubled over with the force of his amusement, hand clutching at his stomach. Pidge felt her shoulders relax, her anger going all soft and gooey instead. Shiro managed to meet her eyes for a moment and wheezed out something about her buying him flowers, and that pushed Pidge into helpless giggles at the mental image.

"You're such an enormous dork," Pidge said, trying to shove Shiro off his rock. He didn't budge.

"Takes one to know one," Shiro countered, still grinning, and Pidge stuck her tongue out – if they were acting like five-year-olds, why not?

Though after Shiro had slurped down his glop, Pidge felt compelled to lean forward, one elbow on her knee and her chin propped on her fist – a pose stolen from Lance at his smarmiest – and say, "Hey, Shiro, I want to see what makes you lion tick." She accompanied this with a wink and a toothy smile.

Shiro made his long face of revulsion, mouth going down on one side. "You're creepy when you do that."

Pidge batted her eyelashes. (Actually, she wasn't exactly sure what that was, but she blinked ten times fast and figured that was good enough.)

"Fine." Shiro reached over and flicked his finger against her forehead; not hard enough to hurt – Matt would have made it sting and leave a red mark – but Pidge still startled. Shiro pulled back quickly. "We do it together, though." He gave her a knowing look.

"Whatever." Satisfied that she'd won the round, Pidge gathered up their dishes to go toss them in the cleaning compartment. "You ever have the chance to work on any Galra tech?"

Shiro frowned. "I don't think so. Like I said – "

"You don't remember much," Pidge finished for him. She didn't want to get into that now, not on a warm summer day when Shiro was awake and they were having fun. "We can start now, with tools and diagnostics 101. I can give you pop quizzes and everything. Oh, and you can carry stuff so I won't have to lug anything around."

"And here I assumed you'd want me to be your stepladder, not your pack mule."

"You can be both," Pidge shot over her shoulder as she zipped off for the safety of Green. Her hands were full, she wouldn't be able to defend herself if Shiro decided to chase her down.

But he didn't. He followed at a purposeful amble, and as soon as they were inside insisted that they work in full armor to stay as safe as possible.

Pidge hadn't had a chance to explain to him yet the changes she'd had to make while repairing his suit, so she did that now. Judging by the way Shiro frowned, hand on his hip, he wasn't thrilled.

"It's not like I _need_ a jet pack," she said again. "I have my bayard. And in a pinch you can just pick me up and take me with. I'm a convenient portable size. You aren't. Plus," she added, as Shiro's jaw went even more stubbornly square, "there was just enough material from your busted jet pack to cobble together patches to fix the rips, but I can't guarantee your armor's safety as a spacesuit. Of the two of us, you've got the greater need to get inside fast if we're in space."

"I don't like your logic," Shiro told her, still apparently channeling kindergarten.

"Bite me," Pidge countered cheerfully. "When you're all healed up, you can practice with the bayard. Maybe we can take turns with the jet pack." Maybe they'd be rescued long before then, who knew?

Shiro took a breath, and visibly sighed out his irritation. Unlike Pidge's dumb brother (she could think of him like that, because he wasn't dead, so she _knew_ somewhere in the universe he was thinking of her as his dumb sister, too), Shiro didn't argue, push back, or get angry. Pidge worried about that: she didn't think it was healthy. "I'll need your help getting suited up."

Pidge wanted to tease him, but she could feel herself blushing all the way back to her ears and hoped against hope that Shiro hadn't noticed. Probably the way her voice squeaked when she said _sure_ tipped him off. He looked kind of embarrassed himself, but also like he was trying not to laugh at her.

He didn't have much that Pidge hadn't seen, but then, desperation had made her focus on whether he was breathing or bleeding or in pain, not on his naked skin. Now... she channeled her inner Paladin and snapped on the bits that required a right hand, checking the seal integrity and temperature controls. She had figured she shouldn't fuck up the ten-thousand-year-old armor by lopping off the right arm, so she used one of the long strips of blanket left over from making Shiro's shirt to tie the empty arm to his belt.

"There," she said, eyeing her work critically. The patch seemed to be holding, so she shooed Shiro outside to go test his hover capability while she changed.

She'd fused together a shoulder bag from blanket scraps as well (waste not, want not), and she packed her laptop, toolkit, and Shiro's knife, which had stayed razor-sharp even though she was using it to hack down vegetation. Bag over her shoulder and their helmets in hand, she scurried outside, and caught Shiro staring into one of Black's powered-off eyes, feet three meters off the ground and hand stretched out, nearly touching the sun-warmed metal but... not quite.

Pidge let him have his moment, pretending to be busy tying her hair back. It was long enough now to get in the way, but she still couldn't make a decent braid or ponytail, which annoyed the pants off her. Shiro had been hinting that she should let him trim his hair, but A) he was right-handed and B) Pidge didn't want to give him his knife back, irrational as that probably was.

She'd asked Shiro about what had happened in his fight with Zarkon, several times. Neither of them were at a point yet where talking about it was comfortable. Pidge hated knowing their enemy had the power to turn the lions on them, and had a bayard that apparently he'd been improving on for ten thousand fucking years. Shiro's reaction was more visceral: Zarkon had tortured him and stolen his memories and made him fight until he was crippled and then stuck that arm on him. Shiro said once that his brain was like a minefield; he never knew what was under the surface waiting to explode.

Pidge's working theory was that Shiro had stumbled over some of the blue lion's artwork while at the Garrison. Shiro didn't remember, of course, but Pidge's research on him noted that as a cadet he'd been in a loose club of fitness nuts who did long-distance runs and camped in the surrounding canyons. Dollars to donuts Shiro had discovered something out there. Even though he wouldn't have recognized its significance, Zarkon's interrogators probably searched prisoners' memories specifically for the lions. And once someone was found... well, Pidge thought they'd alter him to be an acceptable pseudo-Paladin pilot, and then send him home, brainwashed to fly the lion back to Zarkon.

Shiro still insisted that he'd escaped all on his own; Pidge wasn't going to try and force him to accept her theory about Zarkon using him (even though she thought she was right). But his confidence had been shaken violently. Pidge didn't know if he still considered himself a legitimate part of the Voltron team after his lion was hijacked by Zarkon. It pissed her off. She wanted Shiro to get stubborn and angry, too, but he acted like he believed the symbol of the bayard was more important than the Paladin.

Part of her vindictively hoped that their investigation turned up Zarkon's hacking fingerprints all over Black's programming, just so she could have the pleasure of eradicating them. 

Pidge took a breath and called Shiro down, avoiding all heavy topics by asking about the repairs to the jetpack and the suit and running a few diagnostics. Everything seemed to be functioning just fine, so they went inside; Pidge popped the access panel again and was glad that she'd remembered to wash the blood off the catwalk. Shiro didn't seem particularly disturbed by being there again anyway, and they headed upwards and into the lion's body.

A few hours later, they'd progressed from the inside of Black's left shoulder to the right, and Shiro had propped himself up in a corner and was taking a catnap (proximity to the lions induced bad puns, Pidge had noticed). Pidge had suspected that he'd be bored sifting through data, but she hadn't anticipated actual snoring. At least he'd stopped when she kicked him.

"You're lucky you're cute," she told him, unhooking her laptop and reattaching the access panel. "You're also lucky I'm not Lance, because he seems like the kind of person who'd draw on your face. Not anything rude, but whiskers, or open eyes on your eyelids. I hate to wake you up, but I'm done here, and there's probably enough time to get started on the central core before sundown. What do you think? I could just watch you, but then _I'd_ get bored, and that's never a good thing, my mother always said. You wouldn't believe some of the stuff Matt and I got up to – or maybe you would. Aren't there like eight kids in your family?"

Shiro screwed his eyes shut and reached up to swipe at his chin clumsily. Oops. Pidge might have woken him up with her motormouth. "Are there?"

"Three sibs who're way older than you, then you, and some younger sibs, which sounds like a lot, but you've also got three moms and a dad. Though I think you grew up with just two of your moms. The Garrison vidreview interviewed one of them when you were chosen to go to Kerberos. She looks like you, only normal size and with less gray hair."

Shiro tried and failed to stifle a yawn, and opened his eyes. The handlight wasn't that bright, but he squinted anyway.

"She said you grew up down the road from EAA, and from the first time you saw a rocket launch, you were obsessed with getting into space." Pidge bit her tongue, because so far space hadn't returned that life-long dedication very well, and the shitty stuff was what Shiro remembered the best. "My mom repaired robots and brought me and Matt out on jobs, which turned into _my_ obsession. But my dad's friend Jan Pidgeon showed Matt samples of Martian ice and hooked him. Suddenly he was all, _I'm Matt, I don't like robots, let me cultivate the bacteria in your mouth._" She paused. "The freezer at my house was always full of his gross stuff, and I blame Matt for stunting my growth, somehow, with his experiments."

Shiro rolled his shoulders back and cracked his neck. He didn't look well-rested, but at least he was alert. "How would I have three mothers?"

Pidge rolled her cords up and clipped them, stowing them in the bag and standing up. She barely had to duck her head to move around in here; Shiro wasn't as lucky. "The usual way." Shiro looked irritated. "Does that bug you?" She hoped he didn't have weird prejudices; he seemed to have gotten along well with Matt, who never hid his sexuality.

"I've been trying to remember my family," he said after spending a moment scowling at his knees. "I have pictures and pieces in my head that don't match up. Keith said I was a typical big brother, which felt right, but I remember feeling like the baby, too. Spoiled."

"And now your mom having three faces and personalities suddenly makes sense," Pidge suggested. Shiro shrugged, then nodded. "You want to call it a day?"

Shiro's gaze snapped up to her, meeting her eyes like she'd just issued a challenge. "You said you wanted to finish the central core."

"The central core's going to take at least a week. I just thought I'd do some prelims."

Shiro kept glaring at her, and Pidge remembered that old story about the magical monkey's paw. Yes, she'd wanted Shiro to stop being so accepting and repressive and positive all the time, but obviously she hadn't taken into account that if her wish was granted, she was the only person around for Shiro to be pissed at.

"You're not Hunk, but my dad chose you for the Kerberos mission, so you're probably smart. The work will go faster if you stay awake long enough to lend me a hand." As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Pidge's stomach dropped as she fell right off her high horse into a puddle of mortification. "Oh god, I'm sorry."

"We could both use a break," Shiro said, and suddenly he didn't seem angry any more. "We'll start on the core tomorrow, and I'll pull my own weight." He raised an eyebrow. "You can make arm jokes. I don't mind."

"You're so _nice_ ," Pidge complained, scooting down the ladder first so she could light Shiro's way. "It's not fair."

Shiro's voice ghosted down from above. "I hear I'm cute, too."

Pidge really needed to stop talking so much. Maybe she should take up a new nervous habit, like gnawing on her fingernails or chewing her hair. "I'm putting extra megaspiders in your dinner glop. Just so you know."

Shiro didn't have a clever comeback for that. Ha.

On the third tedious day working in Black's core, Pidge was just starting to think that they were working well as a team when Shiro started getting fidgety and distracted.

"What?" Pidge snapped after he pulled her hair yet again, wiggling in a crawlspace that was not technically big enough for two people.

"Sorry," Shiro said. He tried to move away, and nearly fell on the laptop. "The bandages are itching worse than usual today."

Pidge's heart skipped a beat. "Itching and hot, like an infection?" she asked. "Or like hundreds of ants are crawling all over your skin?"

"Ants," Shiro said, looking pained. "I'd rather not talk about it."

"No way." Pidge gestured at him to get out. "We're taking a break so I can look. Scoot."

She shooed him all the way out to the central clearing, and made him sit at the table while she got the medkit. He flipped open her laptop for a distraction, popping up viewscreens to study. The more Pidge saw of the Black lion's programming, the more she suspected she was looking for the tiniest of back doors; just a blip of code that acted as a switch to turn off Black's built-in AI and substitute one of Zarkon's design. If that was true, she could theoretically prevent the lion from being hijacked again. The bigger problem, in her opinion, was that the switch had already been thrown. Zarkon might have built the back door without a solid idea of what he wanted to sneak through it, but he'd had ten thousand years to think. Pidge had to assume that he'd made the delivery.

Shiro knew about as much about engineering as could be expected from a pilot, and freely admitted to not understanding much about Altean technology, but he had a good eye for spotting patterns and bugs and a talent for asking pertinent questions. Pidge's mom had always respected people who asked about the important things. Back on Earth, Pidge was sure she was making trouble for the Garrison, pressing for answers about the blue lion and the Galra ship they'd destroyed and the disappearance of her entire family.

And Pidge needed to stop remembering that the Galra knew where Earth was, or she'd tear up and freak Shiro out. He was already antsy about the itching (ha, ha).

She set the medkit down on the table and Shiro closed the computer, pulling his shirt off while she got out the scanner.

"I'm going to start here," she said, indicating his side with the scanner. The bandages had faded to a grubby gray, and she unwrapped them carefully to reveal the film underneath.

"Why? What's it say?" Shiro asked, trying to read the scanner data upside-down.

Pidge put her free hand flat over the center of the film and flexed her fingers. The film slipped loose, bunching where it'd been pulled. "If there's no adhesion, that means it's done." She tried again, a little harder, and Shiro's grip on the table went white-knuckled.

" _Tell_ me if it hurts," Pidge snapped. "I can't read minds."

"It tickles," Shiro said reluctantly. Given the number of sibs he had, that was probably very classified information.

Pidge nodded, trying to look as if she was above using that information for evil. "The scanner says there wasn't nerve damage. Congratulations. I'm going to peel this, but if there's _any_ pulling or burning, tell me to stop. Mangling half-formed skin _will_ give you scars."

Shiro nodded. "I've got enough of those." He touched the bridge of his nose, the sharp-edged gash that Pidge thought looked like he'd had someone try to chop the top of his head off.

"Are you self-conscious?" Pidge asked, using her curiosity as a distraction as she tugged the film free, millimeter by millimeter. The skin underneath looked new and pale, but it was whole and unmarked. Score one for Altean medical technology.

"I'm used to them, so not really." Shiro twisted gingerly, trying to see what she was doing. "Are you? Self-conscious, I mean."

Pidge scanned once more to make sure she hadn't overlooked anything; when all the indicators came up _healthy_ , she moved on to unwrap the bandages around his arm. "Because I'm tiny?"

Shiro snorted. "That, too." He touched the healed spot on his side, fingers tracing the edges as if looking for a seam. She nearly batted his hand away, out of habit, but restrained herself. As long as he didn't scratch, it was his body and he could poke if he wanted to.

A lot could have gone wrong with her hackneyed removal of his arm, and Pidge was prepared for unpleasantness. She hoped the wound had closed properly over the chopped-off bone – if it hadn't, she was out of resources to do anything to fix it. Shiro hadn't been complaining of pain, but she knew severed nerves needed proper treatment, which was also unavailable.

She unwound the last strip of bandaging and set it on the table. Taking a breath, she began testing the film. "Considering how we met this'll sound dumb," she started, "but I like being a girl. I liked my floofy dresses and long hair. That doesn't change that I'm one of Earth's foremost experts on alien tech – the other one is Hunk – or that I'm Green's Paladin. After we save the universe, rescue my dad and Matt, and go back home, I plan to blow Commander Iverson's mind. He didn't even bother to arrest me for trespassing or hacking his computer because he thought I was a silly little girl," she added. The insult still smarted.

While she spoke, she teased the film free, easing it gently away from Shiro's skin. None of his older scars had been erased, she noted, but the new incisions had healed neatly, flesh closed over bone. Shiro raised his arm to get a better look, rotating his shoulder.

Pidge must have looked upset at what she saw, because he ruffled her hair and said, "You did a good job. Not many little girls would have – "

She curled her fingers in the air, the universal tickle-threat gesture, and Shiro cut himself off, tucking his elbow into his side protectively.

"Seriously." He met her eyes and smiled. Shiro was a devastatingly good smiler; better than Lance, who always seemed kind of smug, or Keith, who looked like his face hurt, or Allura, with her sad eyes. Shiro's smile made people believe him, and Pidge was especially weak to its power when he was shirtless. "My arm was already gone when I met you, and I didn't like having a weapon built-in. Especially one I never trusted not to kill me, one way or another."

Pidge didn't know what to say to that. Everything Shiro had been through, all the Galra's horrifyingly institutional tortures, were so far outside of her experience that she doubted her intuition. Then there were the memory wipes, which seemed to have deleted the file structure of Shiro's brain; his memories were there, but inaccessible and nameless until some external force triggered them. Those flashbacks made Shiro freeze, but he was always so good afterward about pretending that because the information he recalled was useful, getting it didn't hurt him. Pidge knew better. Keith had warned her not to wake Shiro up during his nightmares – he'd gotten thrown across the room once, he said, making her promise not to tell Shiro she knew.

She had a surprise that she'd been saving up, though, and she was 99.9% Shiro'd like it and keep smiling, which was somehow now a goal in her life. Mission: Keep Shiro Happy.

"Help me get the laundry together," Pidge said, pitching her voice low so it didn't waver. She'd bawl if Shiro thought she needed one of his side-arm hugs right now. She looked at the sky, judging the time by the sun's position. "Let's take the day off, and go do the cleaning."

Shiro's eyebrows pulled together in the middle in exaggerated confusion. "You have a weird idea of relaxing."

"All my ideas are weird," Pidge pointed out. "You know this. Hurry up."

The next time Pidge was stocking the lions' emergency supplies, she was going to include changes of clothing and maybe a portable version of the fabric extruder Coran had back at the castle. The combined pile of her and Shiro's washable clothes was tiny, because they had to wear the same thing every day. Her socks were nasty. The one unmutilated blanket was rank. Heck, with Shiro's help, she could probably even wash the tent clean.

Shiro went along with the preparations gamely, but Pidge caught him wrinkling his nose as soon as they were sealed into the flight deck with the smell. He didn't ask where they were going and she didn't tell him. He caught on as they were circling down to land, ignoring the HUD to lean forward and look out the window at the white plumes of steam rising up.

"Cool, right?" Pidge said. "There's a lot of seismic activity up here." She pointed up to the plateau, shrouded in white. "Those are boiling lakes. I'm not taking you there." She brought Green down gently by the riverside and pulled up the thermal view. "There are hot springs under the river – see, this whole downriver area's between thirty-five and forty degrees."

Shiro was staring at the river like it was a vision of heaven, but he still asked, "Is it safe?"

Pidge shrugged. "Green's been keeping an eye out since we found this place. We've checked for harmful bacteria or animals, it seems okay. The dissolved minerals in the water – why it's such a weird color – will probably give you soft skin, but it's not radioactive or corrosive or anything."

"Once I'm in the water I'm never coming out," Shiro warned her, straight-faced and serious. "Sorry."

Pidge shrugged. She figured he'd have to emerge sometime for food, so she could risk the hot spring spa experience.

They did the washing first, spreading the damp laundry out over rocks and bushes to dry. By mutual embarrassed agreement, they hunkered down on opposite sides of a large boulder to wash their underwear before putting it back on. Pidge wished they had real soap, but she was reluctant to attempt production in Green's food glopper. Synthesizing essential fatty acids was hard enough; she wasn't going to waste any triglycerides just because her socks smelled. She hadn't been using Black's glopper at all; who knew if its programming was compromised? When she and Shiro got it fixed, then she'd make soap, for sure.

The river wasn't deep – Shiro could probably wade across it easily – and flowed at an easy meandering speed. Pidge stuck to the places where her feet could touch the rocky riverbed, practicing swimming against the current and then floating back. The warmth was delightful; it was like the giant bathtub of Shiro's dreams (minus the flowers), and she understood the temptation to stay forever.

Shiro had found a rock abutting the boulder that worked as a seat, and had his head leaned back on the warm stone and his arms stretched out like he was on a comfy sofa. (Pidge didn't look, because the water was too milky to see clearly, but she was sure Shiro was manspreading; he looked like he'd dissolve into glop himself if he relaxed any further.) His hair was wet and raked back, and he had one of the "handtowels" (i.e., a blanket scrap) on his face. Pidge had to stifle a strong urge to splash him as she sloshed back towards shore.

He heard her approach, though, and reached up to lift the towel and give her a deeply goofy smile.

"We could move here," Shiro said, with a dreamy look in his eyes. "We could have hot baths _every day_."

Pidge rolled her eyes, and started groping around under the water to find the seat-rock. Shiro shifted over to the side, but kept a watchful eye on her. Considering the water was up to his shoulders, Pidge would be an idiot to sit normally. She knelt on the stone instead – scratchy on her knees, but better than drowning. Shiro's arm settled over her shoulders, with just enough pressure to suggest she could lean against him if she wanted to.

Which she did, but she felt like she was taking advantage when she shifted closer. She thought she'd been obvious about being attracted to Shiro, but maybe he hadn't caught on. Or maybe he was pretending not to know so he didn't have to deal with an embarrassing situation. After being in close quarters with Matt for so many months, he probably had a good idea of what a Holt with a crush looked like. She wondered if he'd ever considered getting together with Matt (or if they had; she didn't how she'd feel about that). Shiro'd been four years above Matt at the Garrison, so he'd been an officer on the Kerberos mission while Matt was still a cadet; knowing Shiro, he'd have stuck to regulations that ruled out chain-of-command relationships.

Pidge, technically, was not so much a cadet as a criminal, and back on Earth she would probably be tried as an adult for treason, espionage, and faking her identity. Unless the Galra attacked, in which case she could maybe finagle a pardon in return for forming Voltron.

"Are you cold?" Shiro asked, looking down at her.

Pidge blinked. She was up to her neck in warm water, and... snuggled into Shiro's side like a chick nestling under its parent's wing. About as subtle as Lance's crush on Allura. She shook her head, not wanting to talk about it.

But... "Sorry," Shiro said, shifting and pulling his arm away, nearly toppling Pidge into the water, "for being weird."

Now Pidge felt cold. "What's weird is I still want to kiss you, even when you're trying to drown me."

_Whoops._ She knew she should keep her mouth shut, but she couldn't dredge up worry right now. She'd been worrying about so much her ability to feel stress was wearing out. If Hunk were here she'd tell him everything, and he'd say _Better out than in_ , and she'd yell at him for being gross, and he'd tell her her feelings were gross. She missed him – missed all of them – and compared to that horrible absence, what was a little embarrassment?

She couldn't hear Shiro's breathing pick up over the burble of water, but she could see the rise and fall of his chest and hoped she hadn't tripped over one of the things that made him freak out. She leaned back to look up at his face, even though she knew hers was blotchy red, and he looked down at her with wry self-consciousness.

"We could... try that."

When motivated, Pidge moved fast. Shiro's lap was _right there_ ; she put her hands on his shoulders and boosted herself up, knees on his thighs and ankles hooked over his knees, secretly pleased that this put them at eye level.

"You're heavier than you look," Shiro said, arm coming around her back solid and steady.

"Bite me," Pidge said, and leaned in to press her mouth to his. Shiro's eyes fell shut almost immediately, his mouth opening under hers like he trusted that she knew what she was doing. She slid one hand into his damp hair and curled the other around the back of his neck, and did her level best to drive him as crazy as he made her. She didn't have a lot of experience, and odds were Shiro had forgotten most of his, but they made a good team anyway. (Even if she did have to bite Shiro to get him to stop acting like she'd break if he squeezed too hard; she figured that was win/win, because she'd wondered what it'd be like to nibble on his lips, and now she knew, plus Shiro was startled into pulling her in close and holding her tight.)

She was so turned on she felt like she was giving off sparks every place their skin touched, and the damp fabric of her undershirt and their shorts didn't stop that feeling of electric buildup. She couldn't stay still, and Shiro swore, moving against her with intent, like they'd blown past making out and were now definitely getting each other off. Shiro's hand slid up her side until his fingers cupped under her breast, and Pidge made a very undignified squeak.

Then Shiro said, "Wait, can we – " and leaned back and away, eyes definitely in the mood for sex but with a pinch to his (kind of bite-swollen, sorry) mouth that made Pidge aware all of a sudden who he was, and who she was, and where they were, and why.

"Too fast?" she asked, as matter-of-fact as she could.

"The kissing was good," he said. He reached up and ran his thumb under her lower lip. The gesture was sweet and made her aware of how turned on she still was. "I don't... it's too close to losing control."

Pidge nodded. "Okay." Shiro was looking like he'd just kicked her puppy, and she didn't want that, no matter how much disappointment she was feeling in her shorts. "It's cool." She ruffled his overgrown hair. "I was going to offer to trim this, if you wanted. We could do that."

Shiro rubbed his hand along her arm, and then nodded.

"One more for the road," Pidge said, and leaned in to drop a kiss on his mouth with a loud smack. It popped the heavy mood like a bubble, and Pidge was grinning as she waded up to shore. Her wet clothes clung like a second skin; she hoped Shiro was okay seeing all her not-very-well-hidden bits on display. She snuck a glance as she was scuffing into her shoes. He seemed to be watching her ass, and his hand was under the water, possibly innocent, possibly not. She felt a little smug. Not that she wanted him to suffer, of course, but... after all the crap they'd been through, sexual frustration was a nice change (especially now that she wasn't the only one feeling it).

Shiro's knife was up by their shoes, the towels, and the green bayard. Pidge had been raised to respect tools, so she knew how to handle the razor-sharp blade, but her track record at hacking hair off was not so good. Fortunately, there weren't any mirrors on this planet (she made a mental note that they should _not_ be included in the emergency supplies).

Shiro was pretty good at giving directions, though, and his style was a lot easier to maintain than Matt's mop-top. "Shorter is better," Shiro said in encouragement. "It grows fast." Pidge bit her lip in concentration and slid the blade up, shearing the sides down to almost nothing. "Don't worry."

"Stop moving your jaw, or your ears will be in danger," Pidge muttered. Why were sideburns a thing? "What do you want me to do with the floppy bit in the middle?"

Shiro prudently waited until she took a moment to step back and check her work to say he just needed it out of his face. Mostly. "There's a scar here." He slid his fingers into the long front bit, feeling for a second and then pointing it out. "I try to keep it covered."

"Gotcha," Pidge said, and pushed his hand out of the way. In the end, she wasn't quite sure the sides balanced right, but she figured she could ask Lance or Coran to fix it once they got rescued. Shiro ducked his head under the water to scrub away the trimmed hair, and Pidge wiped the knife off on her shirt carefully. She mostly used it like a machete out in the woods: it cut through everything except metal, and never dulled or rusted.

A nasty cold sense of horror welled up in her as she looked at the black blade and the handle that was too big for her hands. Tools were her thing, and she couldn't believe she hadn't noticed until now.

The sun had sunk to mid-afternoon in the sky, and it was time to be heading back. They sloshed to shore, wringing their clothes out and toweling off before collecting the dried laundry. Shiro kept giving Pidge worried little glances; she knew she was being too quiet, but she was thinking. But when they were folding up the tent (restored to clean-smelling crispness) his hand brushed hers and he pulled back immediately, muttering _sorry_ and not meeting her eyes.

What he was thinking was probably worse than what she was going to say. Maybe.

"Hey," Pidge started. "Question." Shiro gave her a wary glance. "You didn't have that knife back at the castle. Where'd it come from?"

Logically, there was really only one answer.

_On the plus side, I don't regret kissing you,_ Pidge thought helplessly. _On the minus side, maybe the reason we haven't been able to find any Galra interference in Black's programming is because something was masking it. Some Galra device that either Zarkon or his druid gave you during the battle and then compelled you to forget._

Shiro must have been thinking along the same lines, because he went pale, eyes wide and unseeing, hand clenching the tent fabric and breath coming fast.

"You're not there now," Pidge said, which was stupid and didn't help. She thought that flashbacks must feel like being stripped naked – all secrets exposed, unsafe. She didn't know where he was in his head, or how to bring him back. The only thing she could do was babble, but she was good at that. She talked about her favorite meal at the Garrison, then segued into barbecue lighting techniques, and was describing her dream cheeseburger – medium rare, three kinds of cheese, no lettuce – when she noticed Shiro breathing himself calm and forcing his body to relax. He still looked ashamed, the way he did, but she'd guess he was back in himself.

"Hey," she said, and met his eyes. "I'm sorry all I talk about is food. Are you okay?"

He shook his head. "They're using me." The words came out low and raw. "No matter what I do."

"Do you want to talk about it, or do you want to hear my opinions on breakfast foods? I feel pretty strongly about hot cereals. Matt used to pull my hair to get me to shut up."

Shiro brought the corner of the tent over to continue folding. Pidge ignored the wrinkles – it was never going to be perfect _à la_ Coran, anyway – and fitted the ends together, while Shiro picked up the hanging edge.

"I liked being their Champion," he said, like he was straining to find the words. "I wanted to please them... Zarkon. It's... crucial, for me, to separate my feelings from how I was made to feel. I remembered being shown absolute darkness, and Haggar calling the extinction of all those stars, all that life, a _good_ thing. As if they were nothing more than the fuel needed to bring back their lost homeworld."

Pidge fitted corners together again, and then rolled the tent up tightly. "Lost like they forgot where it is, or lost like someone took it?"

Shiro rubbed his forehead, frowning. "I think they destroyed it back when they didn't understand quintessence well."

"How much quintessence would it take to turn back time?" Pidge wondered out loud, while her brain was already gnawing at the problem. "Or bring a planet here from the past. Even if it were possible, the preparation and planning would be insane. Which would explain why Zarkon doesn't get bored – I want to live a nice long life, don't get me wrong, but I bet it's hard to get out of bed after a few hundred years. Wake up, suck a few planets dry, eat some glop, and cackle evilly, for four million days on end. Yuck."

"Yuck," Shiro repeated dryly. Pidge grabbed as much laundry as she could, the tent tucked under her arm, and headed back to Green. Shiro followed with the rest of their stuff. As they stowed it all away, he added, "I think that's why he wants Voltron. He could collect enough quintessence in half the time with Voltron, or have kiloyears of work undone if planets are freed."

Pidge wanted nothing more than to believe Shiro, for his sake as well as her own, but she couldn't help her kneejerk desire for independent confirmation. It wasn't that she didn't trust him – she really wanted to trust him – okay, she might have some trust problems. But Shiro wasn't alone; Pidge was just waiting to have words with Coran and Allura about their selective editing of the truth.

Shiro leaned against the wall as she flew Green back. He looked like he wanted to cross his arms, but as he couldn't he put his hand on his hip, thumb hooked casually into his waistband. He was pulling on the role of team leader, very deliberately, as if he needed to distance himself – no, separate was a better word, Pidge decided – from being a prisoner and Champion.

"We haven't found signs of Galra tampering in the black lion, and I know you find that suspicious. I agree. I was _there_ when all the systems went purple and locked me out." Pidge nodded. He'd told her back when they started working on Black that his mental interface with his lion had changed after that. _Mechanical and lifeless_ , Shiro had said. "Disposing of the, the..."

"Thing," Pidge cut in. The knife was wrapped in the facetowel and stowed in an outside compartment. While objectively Pidge knew that nothing had changed since yesterday (when she'd cut fruit off a tree) or the day before that (using the blade to pry off the access plates for Black's AI crystal arrays), she wanted to touch the knife as little as Shiro wanted to talk about it.

Shiro nodded, as though emphasizing a point instead of being unable to say the word. "Getting rid of it should be our first priority. If it _is_ masking Galra interference, one of us needs to be here to deal with... whatever happens when that shielding fails." Pidge opened her mouth, but Shiro beat her to it. "You know Black's systems better than I do. But I'd have to pilot the green lion."

Pidge had barely made the query when Green responded. "She says no problem. Also, you should practice using the bayard. Something something mental link psychic woo shit. I mean Altean tech." She squinted at Shiro, suddenly wondering. "Did you ever practice with any of the other bayards? Speaking of weapons that you control with your brain."

"I came with mine built in," Shiro reminded her. "Can paladins do that? The bond seems very personal."

"Why not?" She called the bayard up and tossed it over; he caught it neatly. "Don't zap yourself in the face."

Shiro had been studying the markings along the side, and shot Pidge a dirty look. She shrugged, and started the landing cycle as the HUD showed their campsite within range.

By the time they had come to a (slightly bouncy) stop, Shiro had managed to get the bayard to flicker on for a few seconds at a time. He looked happy, and Pidge wondered if he could feel Green at all. Green usually made her feel calm and confident, though there was no way she'd tell Coran or Allura that.

Outside, Black crouched like a statue, dark and still. Ten thousand years ago Zarkon had been her pilot, wielding the most powerful bayard, and somehow friends with the king and the previous paladins. Allura had probably learned all those training techniques from watching them. That felt so weirdly wrong that Pidge got the shivers, and dragged her eyes away from Black back to Shiro, who was practicing blade moves with slow deliberation. Constantly needing to be aware of the changes to his body and mobility, Pidge thought, and reached out to Green, asking her to make things right somehow.

The bayard glowed to sudden brightness, and Shiro froze, eyes wide; after a moment, he looked around as if he was seeing the lions in a whole new light (bonus bad pun point to Pidge).

"We can do this," Shiro said, possibly speaking to Green, who sent a pulse of encouragement through the mental interface. He looked at Pidge, determined and hopeful. 

"Of course we can." She grinned, and Shiro smiled back.


	3. Chapter 3

That had been a good moment (especially since it led to some nice, if restrained, kissing), but a week later Pidge was praying to the lion goddess to get her optimism back. Black had suddenly twisted and rolled, doing her level best to crush Pidge into jam. Everything in Black's innards now glowed purple instead of aqua, which meant she was deep in the guts of a Galra-controlled ship. Shiro and Green had to still be close to the sun, twenty-some minutes away even at top lion-speed, so Pidge was on her own.

Not that Shiro could do anything, except maybe jump on Black's head. Pidge's helmet mic had broken after an athletic dive away from a piston, so she guessed he was upset right now. He deserved better from life than to be stuck out in space thinking he'd heard her die. She was going to have some _stern fucking words_ with Zarkon about that someday.

Right now, as far as she could tell Black was trying to open a wormhole. Fortunately, Pidge was a leading expert at being a thorn in Galra ass.

The crystals and neurosystem wiring were all inside shock-resistant panels and crawlspaces, away from moving parts, so that's where Pidge was, like an oversized mouse. She wished she had the castle mice, actually; they'd be super useful. Currently she was upside-down with a knee under her chin, but if she twisted her shoulders – there – she could disconnect Black's front legs.

Black went from mid-leap to face-first crash into the dirt, and Pidge took advantage of the fall to climb up into the power center. Energy had been redirected to electrocute anyone who tried to access the AI systems, but Pidge was prepared for that. She inched across the catwalk to the secondary power crystals and pulled them all, then made a beeline for the AI. She hooked her laptop in and got her first good look at the program Zarcon had activated. 

As she'd hoped, Black's normal Altean systems seemed to be intact; they were just encased in a shell of Galra interference. Unbreakable from the inside, but weak on the outside, undoubtedly because Zarkon needed the ability to upload changes and control the lion remotely. But if Zarkon could make Black spit Shiro out like the nastiest Paladin dinner, Pidge could make the program eat itself, piece by piece. In a perfect world Pidge wouldn't have to do this while lashed to a very uncomfortable strut while Black rolled. In that world she'd also be taller – just enough that she could kiss Shiro without having to climb him like an access ladder. While she was wishing, a kitten would be nice, and also real cheeseburgers. Her dad and Matt home again, and both of them cool with the fact that she had a thing going on with Shiro.

Matt was going to be so envious, Pidge thought, and watched the purple emergency lights flicker back to white, one by one. As she chipped away at Zarkon's work, Pidge scanned everything that was newly coming on line for anomalies. She needed to make sure that Black couldn't be hijacked again, for peace of mind and her professional pride. Coran would be so disappointed in her if she half-assed a lion.

Black's AI woke with a roar and a futile attempt to stand; Pidge was startled into nearly dropping her laptop.

"I'm repairing you," Pidge yelled, and slapped a cable box. "You hear me, tin can?"

Black's presence pushed into her mind, muted and clunky but absolutely furious. If an AI was capable of anger, Pidge mused. Maybe she was just anthropomorphizing a set of programmable behaviors: seeing curtness in speed and vicious intent in the simple act of wiping virus programs. Distrust of the person elbow-deep in your programming was probably a healthy defense mechanism, especially after having Zarkon seize control.

She told Black about Allura and the castle, the collapse of the wormhole, and the battle with Zarkon before that. Black didn't know why she'd turned on her Paladin – why she had two Paladins, and each wanted to harm the other. Her programming couldn't handle the conflict, Pidge diagnosed, but couldn't help imagining how she'd feel if her parents were trying to use her to kill each other.

It made her nose run, and she sniffled over her keyboard.

"Hey," Pidge said, trying to think of anything that would make Black feel better. She probably didn't need to vocalize, but Black seemed to understand more easily when her thoughts were formed into words. "Can you contact the green lion and your Paladin? The normal one, I mean, not the Galra asshole."

Black was still angry that _her_ Paladin wasn't here, but Pidge thought she sensed that Black wanted to hear Shiro's voice as much as she did. (Or maybe not, maybe Pidge was projecting like a cinema, who knew?) A moment after her request, Shiro's voice crackled out of Pidge's dying laptop speakers.

"Hey there," Pidge said. "Everything here is fine, no problems. Don't worry. I'm good, Black's good, how are you?"

"Fine," Shiro said, shortly. "Now. Long range scanners show a fifty kilometer trail of destruction that doesn't look _good_ on the HUD."

"The Galra are fuckers," Pidge said, by way of explanation. "Give me half an hour to restore the systems I took offline, and Black'll be just like new, factory settings and all. She misses you," she added, feeling silly for sharing her anthropomorphic imaginings.

"I miss her, too," Shiro said, with a straight face as far as Pidge could tell. "I'll be there in five minutes or so."

"Cool," Pidge said, and her fingers flew over the holo displays.

 _Front legs_ , Black reminded her, still feeling suspicious, but she left the audio link active until Pidge finally snapped her laptop shut an hour or so later and uncurled from her painfully cramped position to totter outside.

Shiro was leaning against Green's front paw like he was lining up for a new game release. He had the tent set up and everything. When he saw Pidge, he came to meet her halfway, with a long careful hug that Pidge leaned into, wrapping her arms around his waist.

"You did good work," he said. His broad hand on her back held her steady. Which was fortunate, because suddenly her knees were shaking. "Your family would be proud of you."

" _I'm_ proud of me," she mumbled into his chest. "I deserve a doctorate in Altean tech. You should get on that."

The ground shook, and Pidge heard the lions moving, all on their own. She turned, careful to keep Shiro's arm around her, and saw Green and Black pacing around each other. The site where Black had finally crashed to a stop was a grass-covered plain overlooking the ocean; the dirt churned up by her thrashing was sandy and damp. Pidge was glad that they hadn't fallen into the water, which would have sucked in many ways. The circling of the lions trampled the grass down even further, but Pidge wasn't about to get between them to yell about environmental damage. Finally, they bumped their lion noses and collapsed onto each other in a tangle. With a bit of shifting and settling, the lions ended up with their tails entwined and one of Black's paws slapped nearly into Green's eye. A steady thrum Pidge felt through the soles of her boots made her wonder if they were _purring_.

Pidge kept her voice low and pretended very hard that there was no such thing as a mental link. "I want to say that this is some kind of advanced diagnostic technique, but our lions just made a kitten pile."

"They are pretty adorable," Shiro agreed. "Keith would love this." He cut himself off. Pidge had noticed that she also avoided naming people who weren't here, but she was feeling optimistic now.

"We'll teach all the other lions to do that when we get back to the castle. Maybe Coran can dig up some kind of recording device to make vids. Or do you think it'd undermine the whole galactic defender mystique?"

"I think they've earned the right to nap in their downtime." Shiro gave Pidge's shoulder a squeeze and then let go. "So have you. Let's get the armor off and see what my lion did to you."

Pidge made a face. "It wasn't that bad. Not much worse than dodging Galra in the castle ducts, anyway."

Shiro made a noncommittal noise, not exactly agreement, and nudged Pidge over to go sit in the tent. She was glad they'd washed it clean of the smell of sweaty socks and dirty hair; they should go back to the river, she thought, her fingers suddenly tired and clumsy as she stripped down. The warm water would probably be good for all the bruises that were checking in, now that she wasn't otherwise occupied. She felt like she'd been through a mangler.

Shiro settled cross-legged in front of her with the medkit in his lap. The serious-leader frown line settled between his eyebrows as he rummaged for antiseptic and contusion cream. They didn't have much left in the way of medical supplies, but Pidge had no regrets.

"We'll be able to leave soon," Pidge told him. "No problem. Black knows what to do, and might agree to share with the class now that you're back."

"Uh-huh." Shiro dunked a scrap of towel into the water cup and leaned in to carefully wash dried blood off her face. There was a lot considering Pidge hadn't even realized she'd been bleeding. She walked her fingers up the side of her head until she found a sticky patch that hurt when she jabbed it by accident. "Stop that."

Pidge wrinkled her nose. "It's my head." She poked at it again, just because she could. It wasn't a long or deep cut; he decided she'd be fine.

Shiro wet another rag and had her take her glasses off to hold it over her eye – _to keep the swelling down_ , he said, but she knew she was going to have a nasty black eye tomorrow anyway. She'd kneed herself in the face at one point, and her knees were wicked sharp. It even hurt when she yawned, which sucked, because she kept yawning. Shiro just smiled every time, and she worried this weird indulgence meant he thought she was cute or something. Allura's mice were cute; the lions were cute; Pidge was a force to be reckoned with. She nearly said that out loud, but was cut off by her grumbling stomach. Shiro handed her a cube of goop-bread to gnaw at while he finished putting stuff that stung on the cut.

He wanted to know where else she was hurt, and Pidge eyed him as she chewed. She didn't like raisins as a rule, but the goop-bread would almost be palatable with cinnamon and raisins. Shiro probably wouldn't be distracted if she told him that, and might feel upset or annoyed or hurt, like she didn't trust him.

"This stuff needs butter," she said, chewing and swallowing. Shiro just kept giving her _that look_. "I think I'm all bruises from the back of my shoulder down to my ass." She pulled up the hem of her undershirt in the back and twisted around – which, _ow_. "I've done worse falling off mountains and fighting Galra. Does it look nasty?"

"Excuse me," Shiro said, and she caught on to his intent only once he slid the fabric up, his fingers brushing against her back. She shivered and got all goose-bumpy. Her attempt to wave away the fact that she was also blushing wound up being a flail where she whacked Shiro in the ear with the wet towel. She yanked her hand back and covered as much of her face as she could, wishing for once that she had half of Lance's ridiculous confidence in his own suaveness.

"I'm tired," she mumbled. No excuse like a flimsy one.

Shiro didn't even sound like he was laughing at her; the same concern in the warmth of his hand on her skin was in his voice. "I'll try to keep this from tickling," he said, so sincerely that she couldn't bring herself to say that it hadn't tickled, exactly. "Could you could open a bag of the contusion cream so I can cover these for you? Otherwise you'll really feel it in the morning."

Pidge nodded, and held the bag for him as he worked his way down, trying not to press too hard as he rubbed the cream in. She had a good idea of how far the bruises went – she was sitting on some of them – but when he reached the waistband of her shorts he paused, and she grabbed the opportunity to pull her shirt down.

"Thanks," she said, and toppled sideways onto the piled-up mattresses, wriggling until she wasn't lying on any of the bad bruises. The great thing about being in the tent was not having to walk anywhere. Unlike the castle where she always felt that her quarters were so far away she'd fall asleep getting there. Hunk scolded her for curling up wherever she happened to be working, but more than once she'd woken up mysteriously covered with a blanket, a midnight snack and bottle of space juice next to her. Maybe if she carried a tent with her, people would think she was adventuring, instead of just passing out. It'd have to be a small tent, though...

She felt like there was something else she should be saying to Shiro, as he dimmed the handlight and started cleaning up. She couldn't remember what it was, though, and closing her eyes to think was a mistake. Once her eyelids went down, they refused to go up again, and she drifted off between one breath and another.

She woke with a start, for a moment thinking she was at her grandmother's house in the deliciously soft guest-room bed. But something was off. Shifting, she realized she was sprawled face-down on Shiro's chest. He was warm and the slow rise and fall of his breathing nearly convinced her to just go back to sleep, but she couldn't. Making out with Shiro when he was awake was one thing; she didn't want to be a sleep-snuggling creep when he was unconscious.

She started slithering off to the side, as subtly as she could, but Shiro made a low noise of protest and reached up to hold her in place, his broad hand settling on her back.

"Sorry for crushing you," Pidge said. She felt awkward and her instinct was to shuffle awkwardly, but with the current full-body contact that would be _way_ too weird.

"You couldn't if you tried," Shiro said. The rumble of his voice felt like it vibrated all the way down to her toes. "I was awake anyway. I'm not good at sleeping." He took a deep breath that raised and lowered Pidge like a wave. "I thought you... I thought I heard you die." Another deep, regulated breath. "I _am_ good at hiding things."

"I know. I wish you didn't have to. The minute we get back I'm going to re-engineer the helmets so they take a beating better." She wrapped her arms around Shiro's shoulders, hugging as much of him as she could reach – hopefully hard enough to squeeze out all that terribly mechanical breathing.

Shiro hugged back with his usual restraint. _Always vigilant_ , Pidge noted, _to keep from showing anger or upset or fear, because that was who the Galra had made him._ Being careful and caring was Shiro's way of asserting his own identity as loudly as he could. But she thought a _little_ letting go might make him feel better, and shifted up to kiss him.

The kissing led to other things, and clothes came off, and Pidge tried to communicate that she was up for whatever he was – no pressure, but no worries, either. Shiro kept asking _Can I...?_ and _Is it okay to...?_ , which Pidge found annoying – it was her body and she knew what she wanted – until she realized that he wasn't giving up control (maybe he couldn't or just plain wouldn't). Instead, he handed it over to her when it got too heavy or sat in the way of what he wanted. Which was so _trusting_ that Pidge felt dizzy, and more naked than she already was.

They both agreed, after the best kind of experimentation, that Shiro was better off with his hand free and not bracing his weight. Pidge didn't mind being on top; even with all her bruises, she liked rolling her hips for the slide along his dick's hard length. Shiro cupped her breasts in turn like they were sacred, and made her toes curl with flicks of his thumb. In petty but profitable revenge, she licked _his_ nipples and got not only a squirm but also a half-suppressed groan. He asked if she minded being touched with his right arm – like she _would_ , she told him, indignant, and kissed along the scars and new skin until Shiro reached up to stroke her face, touch not any less tender for lack of fingers.

When Shiro told her he was close, she wrapped her hand around him as best she could and caught him watching, eyes wide and mouth quirked as if holding back a laugh.

"I know I'm tiny," she told him. "It's a feature, not a bug."

"Bite-sized," Shiro grit out, as if he just had to brave her wrath and risk his orgasm to share that.

Pidge showed him her teeth and ducked down to lick at the head of his dick. She wasn't sure exactly how this worked, but she wanted to try and figure out the variables. Shiro wasn't enormous, but he was proportional, and with her bruised cheek still aching she didn't try to fit too much of his dick in her mouth. Just some, to see what it was like – softer against her lips than she'd expected, and definitely saltier, and suddenly she got what was so hot about penetration. She felt like a circuit had been completed, and when she moved her mouth and hand together Shiro reacted like he was the one being electrocuted. He made a desperate noise, hand tugging at her hair as he tensed, and Pidge pulled back just in time to have Shiro come in her mouth, and on her mouth, and down her chin.

His eyes were on her as he shook apart, and she couldn't look away, either. She thought he was beautiful, sweat making his skin flash gold in the light.

The first thing he said when he got his breath back was, "Sorry."

Pidge blinked, and then realized she was licking her lips. "For what? That was _hot_."

Shiro curled up – with his incredibly sexy stomach muscles – and licked her face clean. Pidge was squirming by the time he was done, trying to ride his thigh unobtrusively.

From the way he was smirking, though, Shiro was on to her. "My turn," he said, and _whoomp_ , Pidge was swooped down onto her back and Shiro's mouth was on her. He asked if she was okay with this – _oh god yes_ – and what she wanted – joking aside, no biting, really – and after that she was mostly loud and enthusiastic and incoherent. She might've wrapped her legs around Shiro's neck. He didn't seem to mind.

She came shaking so hard she probably would have levitated if not for Shiro anchoring her. She rode out the bliss, and in its wake went completely limp. Shiro slid up to the side and she shifted to fit against him, head on his arm as they kissed. There was something primal and _satisfying_ about tasting herself in his mouth; maybe that was gross. Pidge didn't care. Shiro traced the curve of her breast with his right arm, and she nearly purred like a lion.

"That was _awesome_ ," Pidge said, tossing a leg over Shiro's to keep him in place. "We should do that again."

Shiro opened his eyes enough to squint at her disbelievingly. "Now?"

Pidge considered it, but: "Maybe after a bath. And breakfast." She nudged him in the side. "Bite-sized, my ass."

His eyes slid shut again, and he smiled like he knew she wouldn't hurt him. "Is that a request?"

Pidge reached up and gave him a half-hearted poke. "Just because you could bench press me one handed doesn't mean I wouldn't, say, glue you into your armor someday."

Shiro hummed lazily, and Pidge was going to ask what that meant when she realized he'd fallen asleep. For real, this time, and he better not dream about anyone dying. Pidge was going to stick around and make double-sure that didn't happen.

With a bruise-pulling stretch, she managed to hook a finger into her bag's strap and drag it over. Once she had her glasses and her laptop, she could work for hours (especially since Coran had replaced the inefficient Earth battery with a power matrix that he estimated would last five to ten megatiqs). She wanted to play with the Galra source code that she'd ripped out of Black, but it scared her enough that she thought she should wait. She did have Black's attempt to open a wormhole, though, and that was... too tempting to rush into, especially now that they knew wormholes could be fallible. She needed to exercise caution and restraint, no matter how much her heart was clamoring for _home home home_. 

(On the heels of that thought, she wondered when the castle, or rather the people in it, began to feel like home. She also lost a bit of time staring at the tent walls fantasizing about opening a wormhole back to Earth. Best case scenario, mom would hug her and Shiro and fall in love with the lions; worst case, the Garrison would blow up or confiscate the lions, and they'd end up stuck in the brig with no way off-world. Not worth the risk, no matter how much she worried.)

A bit after dawn, the steady low thrum from the lions ceased, creating a sudden unsettling silence. Pidge had just about enough time to wonder what that meant before she had to grab her laptop and tuck it against her stomach as she rolled away from Shiro. He'd surged up out of sleep and was on his feet, right shoulder back like he planned on using the Galra arm and his eyes doing that thing where Pidge suspected he was seeing a memory.

"Careful you don't knock the tent down," Pidge said. Shiro's gaze snapped to her, and she crossed her mental fingers, hoping he didn't call her Matt again, not when they were both naked. She'd develop a brother complex or something. She waved her free hand through the air over her head. "The ceiling's low – more me-sized than you-sized, which is weird considering how tall Allura and Coran are. Maybe they shapeshift smaller when they go camping? Does it feel bizarre to you to imagine all these aliens doing normal people stuff, like shopping or cutting their toenails or hanging out _if the tent is rockin', don't come knocking_ signs?"

As she spoke, Shiro's shoulders went down, and his expression shifted – she thought – from flashback to a more normal confusion about what the fuck she was babbling about. "Good morning." He sounded... a mix of embarrassed and frustrated, which Pidge understood, but she didn't think him blaming himself was useful.

"The lions stopped singing, or whatever," she explained, and got up to rummage for her clothes in the mess on the floor. Despite all the Altean contusion cream, her bruises still hurt, and she winced as she raised her arms to pull her shirt over her head. "We should go take a look. Maybe they're hungry." She found his pants right next to hers, and tossed them over.

"I don't feel any distress from the lions," Shiro said. Pidge envied him the easy way he could balance on one foot without a hint of a wobble as he stepped into his pants. "I'm sorry about... I thought I was getting better."

"They're fine. _We're_ doing better here," Pidge pointed out, "because there's no fighting, and we don't have Allura and Coran surprising us with random training and/or battle simulations. Plus despite what happens in vidramas, I don't think even good sex technically has any healing powers, though if you wanted to test that, I volunteer to assist."

"It didn't help your face," Shiro said. Pidge was taken aback – that was the kind of insult she got from Matt; she expected better from Shiro – but he wet another towel and handed it over to her with a gesture, and _ah_ she realized he meant that literally. She pressed the towel to her cheek gingerly. Yep, that hurt.

"Too soon to draw conclusions," she said, and grinned up at him. "The Galra had you for a year. I think you're doing an awesome job living with that." Shiro was yanking his boots on, but Pidge could still see he was blushing. "Hurry up, I want to go check out the lion situation." Pidge located her missing sock and beat Shiro to fully-dressed by a whole two seconds.

The indulgent smirk he gave her suggested that he didn't mind that much.

Outside, the lions were still curled up together, but Black opened up for them as soon as they emerged from the tent. Green was emanating a distinctly smug feeling, and Pidge couldn't help being infected by the excitement as she followed close on Shiro's heels, up the gangway to the flight deck. Nothing was obviously new, but as soon as Shiro sat down displays popped up.

Pidge boosted herself up to sit on the back of the chair and peer over Shiro's shoulder.

"They're schematics," Shiro said. "What for?"

Pidge pointed at the holos in sequence. "This is the programming matrix – mostly quintessential, you see all the blue bits? Coded crystals would go here, and here. Power source. And then this one's the shell that holds everything in place."

"It looks like a bayard," Shiro said slowly, reaching out and rotating the image side to side, then flipping it over.

"Definitely a bayard," Pidge confirmed. "Like, _your_ bayard, to replace the one that was lost. We'll need Coran for the actual manufacture, but _holy crap_ our lions made you the best birthday present ever." She gave up trying to even sit still and jumped down to go caress the coding and praise Black for being a clever, clever lion.

"It's not my birthday," Shiro said absently, still studying the virtual bayard with an intensity that would have set a lesser projection on fire. "Did you know they were capable of this?"

Pidge shrugged. "We probably don't know half of what the black lion can do, because until yesterday there were whole systems Black couldn't access. Like the ability to open a wormhole back to wherever the castle is." Her face hurt from grinning this much, but she couldn't help herself.

Shiro's fingers froze midair, as if he was trying to grasp the virtual bayard in his hand. "We can go home."

Pidge waggled her hand in the air like a balance. "In theory, yes – I mean, that's what Blue did straight out of the box, to bring us to Arus. But I'm not sure exactly how it works, and there were extenuating circumstances then. Give me a day." She patted the control panel, hoping Black wasn't taking insult. "We were super lucky to survive the destabilized wormhole and end up on a planet with atmosphere, food, and water, but this time I don't want to take that risk."

"I know I can count on you," Shiro said. He nodded once, as if that settled things.

"Let's hit the river first, for breakfast and a bath." Pidge supposed she shouldn't use Shiro's weakness against him, but he looked so happy at the idea of cleanliness. Probably the Galra only believed in cold water and buckets.

"I'll take Black." Shiro reluctantly collapsed the bayard schematics and called up navigation. "How did you switch Green's controls to left-hand only?"

Pidge walked him through the process, even though it would have been faster to just do it herself, and caught Black starting to anticipate Shiro's menu choices. Mentally, she thought she felt distress from the lion, as if just learning that her Paladin was injured.

"I'm okay," Shiro said, pressing his palm against the HUD and dragging it a few centimeters to the side. "A lot better than I was. You don't need to worry."

Pidge suddenly felt like an intruder on a private moment. She gestured toward the door. "I'm going to go pack up the stuff, and stuff." She took a few steps back. "Radio me when you guys are ready to go." Shiro raised his hand and gave her a distracted smile; she waved cheerily and ducked out.

The tent collapsed easily as soon as she had the blankets and mattresses put away, and after that there was just the medkit and the handlight and Pidge's armor, which someone (thanks, Shiro) had cleaned after Pidge conked out. Green's flight deck took on the distinct smells of sweat and sex, worse after the door was closed. To distract herself, Pidge curled up sideways in her chair and messed about on her laptop until take-off orders came.

When they got there, the river was just the same, but without shyness and awkwardness bathing was a lot more fun. Pidge washed all her clothes and swam naked; they had sex again – twice – and napped in the sun. For all that Pidge couldn't wait to get back to the castle and find out how the others were (they were all together, of course, and had been searching for Pidge and Shiro, and hadn't been attacked by any bad guys while unable to form Voltron, and had also discovered the planet of delicious cheeseburgers, while she was fantasizing), she was going to miss whatever-this-was that she had with Shiro. They'd have responsibilities when they were back, and a lot less privacy. People would probably be weird – Hunk would be protective of her, Keith protective of Shiro, and Lance would get all desperate-looking and demand to know _how_.

Pidge smirked, and sat up to check whether Shiro was awake. His eyes slitted open after she stared at him for a minute, and she opened her mouth to suggest either lunch or more sex, when suddenly – 

_the lions roared_ , surging out of their lazy sprawl into full battle readiness.

"Galra," Shiro said, but Pidge _knew_ that. She snatched up her armor from where it'd been spread out to air and yanked on all the bits as quickly as she could. Not as fast as Shiro, but he still had to wait for her help, biting his lip and glancing up at the sky.

As soon as the last seal was locked and cleared, they both ran, leaving all their belongings scattered along the riverbank. Inside, Pidge called up the HUDs as she strapped herself in, and opened communications.

"Wormhole," Shiro said. Pidge was already tracking the ship that had come through. "I think we'll have to engage."

"They know where we are," Pidge agreed.

Black coiled back into a crouch and leapt, heading straight for the Galra. Green followed, though Pidge plotted a course that would be a _little_ less confrontational and sent it over. 

Black course-corrected without slowing down, and Pidge grinned. The Galra ship was hiding out in this solar system's asteroid belt and probably planning to try and use the asteroids to gain a tactical advantage. But two could play at that game.

ETA under five minutes. Pidge sent Black a query about the status of the diagnostics she was running on wormhole capabilities, and got confirmation that the earliest potential escape would be at least twenty minutes after engagement. She recommended using every time-wasting trick they knew, including her ability to go invisible. Shiro should plan on stealthy strikes and the element of surprise.

ETA one minute, with the Galra ship visible on the HUD, and they were hailed via threatening vid. Sugary promises of no harm if they surrendered peacefully, sympathetic mention that all the other lions had been captured, then a steely turn to a _resistance is useless_ spiel. Considering that the officer making these demands was Sendak (less dead than Shiro had led her to believe) and his words were uttered through a hate-filled scowl, Pidge didn't really buy that he wouldn't have them both shot as soon as they turned over the lions.

They had to assume that their communications were compromised, but Black sent a quick pulse to let Pidge know they were going with plan A. _Leave Sendak to me,_ Shiro said. _You do your thing._

Pidge's knee-jerk reaction was that that was a terrible idea. She knew what had happened the last time Shiro 'handled' Sendak. But... either she had faith in Shiro now, or she couldn't be on the team. A leader had to trust that the people under their command would follow orders without second-guessing, her dad had said.

Shiro trusted _her_ , even when she didn't deserve it, like, at all. She'd lied to get into the Garrison; she'd tried to leave the Voltron team, even though they needed her; she'd lied to her team, too, about who she was.

She was good at getting results, but her methods sucked. Actually. And despite all that, Shiro forgave her and still wanted her at his back. She wouldn't have trusted herself, in Shiro's shoes.

 _Shiro was weird_ , she decided, because that was easier to deal with than the realization that Shiro made her want to be a better person.

 _Roger_ , she replied, and brought up Green's full surveillance systems. If Shiro was going to buy time negotiating with Sendak and putting up with the mindfuckery that entailed, she was not going to let him down.

"They can't be dead," Shiro interrupted, anger not hiding the waver in his voice – staged and fake, Pidge told herself, just as planned. As the lions hung motionless over what Pidge assumed was the ship's starboard side, she scanned for fighter bays and tractor beam rigs, trying to map out both traps and weaknesses. "You're lying." Deeper scans traced shielding patterns. "Why aren't you dead?"

Pidge remembered how, after Shiro'd freaked out and shot Sendak into space, Keith had spent days trying to get him to talk. _We shouldn't have asked him to do that_ , she'd overheard Keith snap at Allura. _You don't just leave people alone with their torturers._

Well, this time Pidge had Shiro's back, and Sendak was going to get what he had coming.

"Prisoner 117-9875," Sendak said, mouth curling in disgust. "What a delight. Don't let your weakness condemn yourself and your comrade. I know all about you – how easily broken you are, but also how much you like being re-formed, made useful, and put in your place. Never fear, Zarkon believes you can be useful. Why, you already have done so much for the Galra."

The scans finished while Sendak was still spewing threats and demands; Pidge encrypted the data and sent it over as a quick burst, crossing her mental fingers that Shiro trusted her evaluation of the enemy.

"I'll destroy both these lions before I let them fall into Galra hands," Shiro interrupted in a snarl. The black lion curled and twisted, laser cannon firing a line straight through the giant iron-cobalt asteroid a kilometer away. Pidge had intercepted communications coming from there, and heat and energy signatures that indicated something large and cloaked. She _knew_ Sendak wasn't foolish enough to bring only one ship to this fight.

Well. _Now_ he had only one ship, she thought with satisfaction as the asteroid shattered apart and explosions blossomed silently along the length of the Galra carrier. Shiro'd put enough power into the blast to half-sever the ship top from the bottom. Unfortunately, the dying ship had enough time to launch fighters. Not exactly what Pidge had hoped for.

"Keep them off my back and leave Sendak to me," Shiro ordered, evading sweeping bursts of cannon fire as he moved into position, ready to assault the first ship as soon as weapons power was back up.

"Gotcha." Pidge mentally crossed her fingers and dove towards the fighters. She made Green go invisible and changed course immediately. The fighters had aligned into an attack formation centered on the black lion, and she popped into visibility with targets locked on eight of them. Eight quick shots later and they were fireballs even before the others could redirect weapons to her; by then she was invisible and moving perpendicular to her previous course, Green's thrusters screaming with the effort.

Maybe she fought dirty, she wondered. Maybe her dad would disapprove – he'd always wanted her and Matt to be scientists and explorers, and here was Pidge now, with honestly no idea how many Galra she'd killed over the past months.

Which didn't change the fact that she was picking off all of the fighters and their pilots, and when they were gone she was going to help blow up Sendak's ship around his furry ears, because that was what teammates did for each other.

She took a couple of grazing hits on her second pass, but still lined up a third. Green reassured her that the damage wasn't too bad. Who needed right-side cannons, anyway?

The third pass cleared out the remaining fighters, but they hadn't been that much of a challenge; they'd broken out of anything resembling a formation when Shiro lit up the first ship with two long laser slashes. Pidge went to join Shiro in ripping the shuddering ship apart with claws and teeth – gun turrets, thrusters, ports, bay doors, crunch crunch crunch. She told herself this was strategic violence, but really it was mostly cathartic.

Although deep down she doubted they'd killed Sendak. She wasn't going to mention that to Shiro, though. She'd comb over the battle data when they were home, looking for life signs and escape pods.

 _When they were home_.

All of a sudden she didn't want to be here anymore, with a fierce longing that stole her breath away.

"Hey, Shiro?" she said, over an open comm line because secrecy didn't matter now. "I want to go home now."

The black lion swiveled her head around to look over at Green, the power core for a laser cannon sparking in her jaws.

"Can we do that? I thought you said it'd take a couple days."

Pidge checked. As far as she knew, Black could open up a wormhole back to the castle. It could go very very wrong, of course, and she was listing all the terrible things that could happen, and whether they'd be worse than what would happen when Zarkon found out Sendak had failed, especially considering he knew where they were, when Shiro interrupted:

"If anyone can do it, you can. Take us home."

Pidge took a deep breath, shook out her clammy hands, and used the link she'd left open to Black to start the program running.

Above them, where there'd been nothing but space rocks, a familiar portal opened, shimmering blue with quintessence.

"On three," Shiro said. Black crouched and leapt, and Pidge – caught off guard – jumped after him clumsily, with a spin exaggerated by the damage from the battle. As the lions breached the wormhole, she heard Shiro laughing at her. _Not a bad way to die_ , she thought dizzily, _if this doesn't work._

* * *

They didn't die.

The wormhole opened over a huge ringed planet, and the HUD immediately locked onto the castle, on the third and gaudiest moon, all pink and orange.

Pidge, Shiro, and Coran hailed each other at the same, each talking over the other, so that none of the conversation was intelligible, but Pidge didn't care. As the lions swooped down to the moon's surface (pink grass, orange flowers, _purple trees_ , possibly the tackiest place Pidge had been so far in outer space), the castle came into view, and then tiny figures waving at them frantically, lions standing guard behind them.

As soon as Green set down, Pidge was out and running, not stopping until Hunk had his arms around her and her feet were suddenly half a meter off the ground as she was spun around. She saw Keith going for Shiro with only a little less reserve, throwing his arms around his neck and then just hanging there, like couldn't believe he'd just _done_ that. Shiro hugged back just as hard, though, and then Lance insinuated himself into the embrace. Allura and Coran were hanging back but didn't look happy about it, so Pidge reached out for them, and then there were two tangles of arms and tear-smudged faces.

"Hey, don't," Pidge said, wiping at Hunk's face with her hand. "We're fine! You're all alive! I thought – " her chin wobbled out of her control – "I'd never see any of you again."

"So did we," Allura said, leaning in to press her forehead to Pidge's. "We looked everywhere – we could have looked harder – "

"But you were vulnerable because you couldn't form Voltron," Pidge pointed out. "We had enough trouble with the Galra to know how hard that is. Sendak said you were all dead."

"Keith almost died," Lance said, jumping out of range when Keith tried to stomp on his foot. "He just got out of the healing thing a couple of days ago. And I got this cool scar saving his life from the alien bear." He pointed at his cheek, where Pidge couldn't see anything, but maybe that was due to the lighting.

"I think Shiro's got something to tell us," Keith said, awkwardly changing the subject away from his latest life-debt. He wrapped one hand around the empty right wrist of Shiro's armor pointedly, but Shiro didn't notice, duh. 

Shiro stared over at Pidge instead, his expression panicked. They'd worked out strategies for defeating the Galra, but there was no plan for telling their friends. Pidge mentally shrugged.

"We're dating," she said, and smiled as evilly as she could. "Don't ask me for details, because I _will_ tell you."

Lance's eyes were huge, and his breath wooshed out in a long _hooooly crap_ ; Allura, being a princess and trained to not say things like that, murmured a sincere-sounding, "Congratulations."

Coran tugged on his mustache, looking around in confusion. "Well, _I'd_ like to hear the details."

Which made everyone break out laughing, even Keith, who hadn't stopped blushing since the mention of the bear.

"Maybe after lunch," Hunk said. "There's a fruit here that tastes exactly like a vanilla milkshake. I think you'd like that." He gave Pidge a wink and a smile, and she hugged him again and asked about the cheeseburger situation. He was her best friend, and his approval was important. As was his culinary skill.

"Hey," Lance said suddenly, gesturing wildly with his arms. "Don't look now, but what the hell are our lions doing?"

Pidge boosted up onto Hunk's shoulder so she could see, and then grinned over at Shiro. All the lions had circled around Black and then collapsed into a purring tangled pile, faces mashed into sides and paws tucked against stomachs and tails twining together. "It's a lion thing," she said. "You get used to it." She grinned over at Shiro, who was blurring a bit from the way her eyes were tearing up. He smiled back. "We're really home at last."


End file.
